No Surprise as Yale Looks Inward for New Chief Investment Officer
Posted on 08/25/2021
Yale University decided to stick with an internal candidate for the chief investment officer position. The Yale Investment Office named Matthew S. T. Mendelsohn (age 36) as the endowment’s new CIO. Yale graduate Mendelsohn worked in the venture capital investment space at the endowment. David Barrett Partners, an executive search firm specializing in asset and wealth management and led by David Barrett (Class of 1981), advised the committee. The selection of Mendelsohn, a director with current responsibility for venture capital assets comprising more than 25% of Yale’s total endowment, followed an extensive international search by a committee chaired by former Yale provost Ben Polak, the William C. Brainard Professor of Economics.
As of June 30, 2020, Yale’s endowment was valued at more than US$ 31 billion. Spending from the endowment covers about one-third of the university’s annual budget.
He takes over David Swensen’s job as CIO. Swensen died of cancer after a 9-year battle with it.
Raised in St. Louis, Mendelsohn earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from Yale. Upon graduation he was hired by Swensen, whom he first met through Yale’s Berkeley College, where Mendelsohn remains a fellow. From 2013 to 2018, he co-taught a course on endowment management at Yale School of Management with Dean Takahashi, former senior director in the Investments Office and now executive director of Yale’s Carbon Containment Lab.
