The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
Christopher Ailman embodies The Steward archetype through his decades-long custodianship of CalSTRS, a fund serving over a million public school teachers. Throughout this interview, Ailman frames every allocation decision around long-term accountability to beneficiaries, not short-term performance optics.
“You go from basically operating day to day and normal in those environments to suddenly triage moment and tighten down and meet more frequently and communicate more frequently. We can't spin that ship on a dime. I laugh because retirees will point out to me that Cruise ships have side thrusters now.”
“And then we talk again at about three in the afternoon about what we would do the next day. So we have the ability to try to tilt the portfolio first, initially being defensive. We went into that, thankfully, being slight underweight, but then starting to be aggressive of coming back in and buy.”
“Think of that as a report card. That's terribly short-term. A lot of pressure every 90 days. You may know what you have to do over the next year or three years, but it would hurt that 91 day earnings. Most CEOs find it really difficult to make those long-term decisions.”
“I was also intrigued, probably reflecting my own biases, pleased to see in our quota, divestment is a last resort action that can have a lasting negative impact on the health of the teacher's retirement fund.”
Money Maze Podcast: “CalSTRS: How the $300+ Billion Pension Fund is Allocating in 2023 - With Christopher Ailman, CIO”
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