Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry6 Apr

Bruce MacDonald – The Playbook for Building a Mid-Sized Endowment from Scratch (EP.495)

Bruce MacDonald is the CEO and CIO of the Virginia Commonwealth University Investment Management Company, which runs $2.5 billion for VCU's endowment and health system. Bruce joined the University in 2015 and shortly thereafter, had the opportunity to sell the portfolio and start fresh. Since being promoted to CIO in 2022, VCU has been a top decile performer with a team of just five investment professionals.

Our conversation covers Bruce's unconventional path from a religion major at Wesleyan to fixed income investing at Putnam and endowment roles at Columbia and UVIMCO before arriving at VCU. We discuss the principles of VCU's approach, including building a portfolio around secular tailwinds like India, Vietnam, gold, and artificial intelligence while maintaining abundant liquidity to act countercyclically during market dislocations. We explore VCU's team-based underwriting process, lessons learned from mistakes, and personal influences that have shaped Bruce's investment philosophy.

Learn more about our Strategic Investments: Ascension.

Learn More
Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn
Subscribe to the mailing list
Access Transcript with Premium Membership

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com ⁠)

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(822)

Best of Habit Formation: James Clear

This week's Summer Series concludes with a two-fer on habits. There may be no better way to improve the investment process than to understand what it takes to improve ourselves. We've got two of the ...

7 Sep 1h 11min

Best of Habit Formation: Katy Milkman

7 Sep 57min

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Capital Allocators University Online

We're excited to share something we've been working on for a while: we're bringing Capital Allocators University online. For years, CAU has been an in-person, once-a-year cohort of 25 or 30 professi...

3 Sep 15min

Best of Negotiations: Chris Voss

This week's Summer Series is another two-fer, this time on negotiations. The first is with legendary former FBI-hostage negotiator Chris Voss, the author of Never Split the Difference and founder of t...

31 Aug 44min

Best of Negotiations: Daylian Cain

31 Aug 1h 3min

Best of Storytelling: Matthew Dicks

This week's Summer Series is a two-fer on the essential skill of storytelling. Whether pitching an investment fund to a prospect, an idea to a portfolio manager or CIO, or a request of a family member...

24 Aug 1h 26min

Best of Storytelling: Donald Miller

24 Aug 48min

Best of Pre-Mortem Analysis: Gary Klein

This week's Summer Series covers the pre-mortem analysis with its founder, Gary Klein. Gary discovered pre-mortems while working with fighter pilots and wrote a white paper applying the tool to invest...

17 Aug 48min