Harvard Endowment Manager to Step Down at Year’s End
June 11, 2014 | Read Time: 1 minute
Jane Mendillo, who steadied Harvard University’s endowment after the world’s largest higher-education investment fund lost billions of dollars in the financial crunch, said Tuesday that she will leave office at the end of 2014, The Boston Globe writes.
Ms. Mendillo, 55, took the top post at Harvard Management Co. in July 2008, a few months before the market crash that sent the endowment’s value plunging by 27.3 percent. Since then the fund has earned average annual returns of 11 percent to 12 percent and now stands at $32.7-billion.
After the downturn, Ms. Mendillo pared the fund’s risky assets and cut back on its use of outside managers. “Harvard Management is in a really good spot now. The company and the portfolio are firing on all cylinders,” she said. “It feels like the right time.”
