Asset owners have chosen Kim Lew, chief investment officer of the Carnegie Corp. of New York, as the CIO of the Year.
The honor, bestowed at Institutional Investor’s third annual Allocators’ Choice Awards, was voted on by allocators at pension funds, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, and the like. Lew was chosen from a group of twelve CIOs nominated by their peers for all-around excellence in portfolio construction, risk management, asset allocation, manager selection, board relations, and talent development.
Last year’s Lifetime Achievement honoree Roz Hewsenian presented the award to Lew on Tuesday night during an awards dinner at the Mandarin Oriental in New York.
Other investment organizations honored over the course of the evening included Cornell University, which won Turnaround of the Year for CIO Kenneth Miranda’s rehabilitation of the school’s lagging Ivy League endowment, and Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, which was voted Changemaker of the Year for its commitment to investing with diverse businesses and asset managers.
The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, led by 2017 CIO of the Year Jason Klein, won Team of the Year. Investment Committee/Board of the Year went to the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, chaired by David Stein, executive vice president at Associated Banc-Corp.
Hartford HealthCare’s CIO David Holmgren was one of the evening’s big winners, taking home two awards. Holmgren was chosen by his peers as Advocate of the Year, a new award introduced this year to recognize allocators fighting effectively for their members, organization, or profession.
In addition, Hartford HealthCare’s collaborative relationship with Eversource Energy’s pension fund was recognized as one of two Partnerships of the Year. They tied for the honor with Brown University, nominated for its strategic seeding of Owl Rock Capital Partners’ business development company, or BDC.
Tuesday’s dinner also included a celebration of Michael Trotsky, executive director and CIO of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board. Trotsky was presented with a Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of a multi-decade investment career including nine years of shepherding Massachusetts’ $74.8 billion state Pension Reserves Investment Trust.
The awards dinner followed II’s Masterclass, an afternoon of discussion and debate culminating in the third annual Next CIO competition, a contest to identify the next generation of allocator talent. Seven aspiring CIOs went head-to-head in front of their bosses and peers, who decided the victor after three rounds of rapid-fire questions.
After impressing the audience with his answers to questions on cryptocurrency and due diligence, Caltech managing director Doug MacBean was crowned the next CIO, beating out Adri Chaikin (NY Presbyterian), Roxton McNeal (UPS Group Trust), Joshua Miller (Georgetown Endowment), Venus Phillips (Kresge Foundation), Carlos Rangel (Kellogg Foundation), and Joy Xu (Verizon).
Kresge investments director Phillips placed second, while McNeal, head of multi-asset strategy and allocation at the UPS pension, took third in the next CIO competition.
