During the grim 2008–2009 educational fiscal year, when the average college endowment lost 18.7 percent and Ivy League schools dropped more than 23 percent, the University of Pennsylvania rose to the head of the class.
CIO Kristin Gilbertson, who arrived on Penn’s Philadelphia campus in 2004, looked before she leapt into alternative investments and kept a rainy day fund available for potential downturns. That helped the school’s $5.7 billion endowment beat its peers by 300 basis points, although it still was in negative territory, losing 15.7 percent for the year ended June 2009.
Gilbertson’s bearish view during 2008 prompted her to move Penn into high-quality stocks that performed better in the crisis and keep 15 percent of its portfolio in U.S. Treasuries, to help with liquidity during the move into alternatives. The results? Last year, for the first time, Penn offered grants rather than loans to students from families with annual income of $90,000 or less.
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