Kevin Dalmut, investment officer at the University of Iowa and a veteran of the University System of Maryland Foundation, died on January 19. He was 39.
Dalmut had been managing investments for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement’s $1.1 billion endowment. He had joined the university in July 2019 after a ten-year career at the USM Foundation.
He was viewed as a rising star in the endowment and foundation world, having been named to Chief Investment Officer’s Forty Under Forty list in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
“Our team is heartbroken by the news of Kevin’s passing,” said Sam Gallo, chief investment officer of the USM Foundation. “He was our teammate and our friend, and he will be greatly missed. Our hearts and prayers are with Kevin’s family during this difficult time.”
Dalmut began his investing career in 2003 as an investment associate at consulting firm Cambridge Associates. He worked there for five years before leaving to join the USM Foundation in June 2008, just as the global financial crisis was unfolding.
Dalmut told CIO in 2012 that joining the foundation was “the best trade [he] could have made in 2008.”
Dalmut started working at the foundation in an analyst position before rising to the role of director of private market investments in 2013 under Gallo, who had taken over as CIO of the USM Foundation in 2012. From early in his career, Dalmut was committed to the mission of growing his institution’s endowment to support students and higher education. As he explained to CIO in 2014, “the more successful our investment program is, the more opportunities can be offered to our system’s students and faculty.”
“I get up every morning with that goal in mind,” he added.
His former boss echoed this theme. “Thanks to Kevin’s hard work, diligence, and devotion to higher education, many students were able to receive the necessary funding that afforded them a college education,” Gallo said. “During his years of faithful service, he advanced our program forward, contributing meaningfully to the performance that our funds have enjoyed. Kevin was a great teammate and a fantastic person. Our program is better because of him, and we will miss him dearly.”
Dalmut’s wife, Hanne Dalmut, has said that anyone who would like to make a donation in his memory can contribute to his Movember fundraising campaign. The charity, which Dalmut supported annually in memory of his father, who died in 2010 of prostate cancer, raises money for men’s health and mental health and suicide prevention.
