YouSaid · the spoken record

Ellen Ellison

lines on the record: 64
first: 2017-10-02
most recent: 2017-10-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Be a little more grateful every day for stuff you have. Don't forget that we're all incredibly privileged lucky and we have these amazing jobs that help other people but also are incredibly challenging and intellectually wonderful. So I feel very fortunate to be where I am today.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably a greater sense of relaxation and understanding that oftentimes doing nothing and relaxing more not being so driven so type A, the answer will in fact come to you instead of you chasing the answer. And that's something that you tend to learn as you push 50.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been reading a lot about how teams can be better at decision making and investment decision making. So I've enjoyed these books called Crucial Conversations and Also Radical Candor. And so my personal leadership project for the next year is to really figure out a way. And you'd think it'd be easier with a small team and no doubt it is. And we're all in the same place. So this is not a complex organizational structure. I know there is a way to elicit stronger communication and I want to learn and help others get better at disagreeing constructively to get to a better investment result. And we're getting there. I do have the impression that my voice is, I have to be the ultimate decision maker, but I don't want my The strength of my bias and my opinion to drown out what is no doubt a lot of other great stuff that may be missed.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a wonderful question. So my father was a brilliant idiosyncratic person, and I think that he impressed upon me, I think you raised me as a guy, and that's why I've been pretty comfortable in male-dominated professions. But he just was always on me to ask questions. You know, did you ask questions? Did you ask questions? I think he felt that his education, he had made a mistake by being too shy about speaking up and asking questions. So I think you'd be very pleased to see that I make a living asking questions of other people.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have to know this person? It's hard to say just one because I've been blessed to meet a lot of wonderful people. I'm going to go with my husband because he may listen to this. And he is my favorite person because, you know, I think if you have the good fortune to partner or marry or be with someone who really gets you and supports you, you're very, very fortunate indeed. And he's really made my intellectual and my life in general very, very rich.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I can give you one of each. All right. I ran a half marathon, so that was pretty good. And I'm glad I did it before I had a total hip replacement. So that was also good. They might be related. Yeah, I don't know about the causality there. And then, of course, as a newly arrived citizen of Chicago, what can you say about the Cubs? And so I was excited for the town that really, it was a very, very nice moment when they won the World Series last year.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leadership and strategy intact and going for at least a decade, and in Scott's case what, three decades? I mean, it's amazing.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we're small, but we're scrappy. We try to really hit above our weight class. And we don't, you know, building a reputation takes time. And I think we're on this right path. I feel, you know, five years from now, you could say, ah, that's a program that's been around for 10 years and this is what they've done. I do think that whether you're talking about Scott Malpass, Eric Lumberg, or Dave Swenson, you know, it's the continuity of their leadership and the leadership of their committees and their boards. That's the secret sauce that often can't be measured. But that to me must be super critical when you compare it to other equally well-resourced endowments that have not done as well. I think turnover is deadly in our business. And so to the extent that you can keep”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so far, so good. I wake up occasionally in the middle of the night. I think that I worry about making mediocre choices. I worry about finding people who just turn out to be average or who so, you know,”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not particularly formulaic. It's really situation specific. And again, I think that if you're going to all the trouble to do all the on-the-ground due diligence and work and kicking of the tires, and you're taking two years to make a decision, I really think you have to express in a way that's going to make a difference.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And how do you think about sizing these opportunities relative to some, I don't know if you're using global equities, you're using Aqui Benchmark or something you're talking about tilts relative to that?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if, in fact, they became the analog of the developed world? In other words, if the UK and the US are moving in a certain direction towards populism, maybe the idea is to invest in these Latin American countries that have not done any of the crazy QE intervention stuff on the monetary policy side and are really trying to get their acts in shape as far as governments, corruption are concerned. Now, people have been burned so many times before and right after we did this big trip to Brazil, of course, Brazil blows up again. But we've done really, really well in Brazil, and I do think that at the margin a pan-Latin American strategy is a really interesting way to approach economies in countries that are in really good shape, and there's some terrific companies down there.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Within credit strategies done some unusual things, both public and kind of private drawdown structures in credit else. I guess the only other big idea I've had is I started thinking that if when you consider that six out of eight of the major public markets in Latin America, all around the same time have moved away from statist dierigist governments and said, you know, this really didn't work out, you know, government control of the markets. It's been a mess. Populism hasn't worked and did a deep dive in Brazil with the whole team over a two-week period looking at it's like, what if Latin America and other developing market countries with better balance sheets”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing about Japan is that because of this 25-year drought, there's not that many people to meet. And I'm always amazed when I see people like, hey, I saw you in the early 90s and you're still here. So there's a lot of continuity amongst some of the strategists and investors in Japan. We've had a lot in Europe that's worked out really well and a slight overweight in Europe. I'm fully invested in the US. I think that maybe at 18% that's high for most of my peers, but it has, I inherited a strong US weighting and I took it down very slowly during this nice rally. At 18%, I think that's probably okay. I might pull that back a little bit. I think it's a really challenging time to invest, but then again, I guess we say that all the time. Maybe it should be hard all the time. I find it difficult to figure out what to do.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I have also one active strategy on top of this allocation. So it's about a 4% overweight. I am not inclined to reduce it because even though it's like watching paint dry, the things that I had, nothing has changed about the story. It's just it's obviously taking a very long time. I'm very encouraged by the improvements in earnings at many of the companies that we own. I think that the valuations are still reasonable. I think that most people still don't believe that Japan has moved out of this deflationary period, but I think they have, and this will be really apparent maybe a year from now. So that's one thing I'm still pretty enthusiastic about, and I'm headed to Japan in a month or so. Again, I love Japan. I really enjoy the sensibility.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a couple of overweights in the portfolio. One is Japan. I had been studying and waiting and waiting like everyone else, but I did put an overweight on Japanese equities in June of 2013.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Direct investment. So, our first direct investment we did in a month, I have a really talented director of private investments. I know that if we had the opportunity, we'd like to do more, and maybe we're going to have to add like an analyst dedicated to him for that function because it is hard to do these things very quickly. I believe that most people in my seat understand that the best way to share in more of the economics is to get a little closer to the investment as you begin your career at a family office, you'll realize that family offices have been doing this for years and they're not sure why anyone is even bothering to invest in funds. So you talk to a lot of CIOs of family offices. They'll just tell you that they never expected the GPs to have their interests at heart. So I think hanging out with a lot of large and sophisticated family office CIOs has really”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the best decision, investment decision making is made by fewer people. My group understands that at the margin, everyone will be working more than they would if they were in a more standard size. If you have four of the right people, you can get a lot done. We had never done a direct or co-investment and we got a call from someone whom we respect in Chicago and someone had dropped out of a deal. The deal was already done. We knew the other LPs. It wasn't a large check, but it was large considering it was our first”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say we're about 12% the arm's length investments I really do consider the risk to be much more along the lines of private equity because these are companies so even though they're investing”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a beer can manufacturing company in Africa as well. So these are through funds. We do use a fund to fund when it's a relatively small part of the portfolio, but also to kind of get introductions into a space so that we'll do a couple of the funds and then we'll say, all right, now we know all the players in the market and we'll go direct to the manager.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have the direct farms, and then we also have investments in specific funds. One is a kind of a U.S.-based nut a pecan farmer and they're rolling up pecan groves trying to turn pecans into the same thing as almonds have become and those are in the US and then we've done a co-investment with fresh fruits in in the southern cone exporting mostly to Asia so the whole area of fresh produce and fresh fruit at the margin will probably see a lot of growth as developing countries demand that and then in Africa you're talking about dairy fish tilapia farms and also poultry so a lot of it is fresh produce and fruits but also a lot is how to introduce more protein into other diets of developing countries so people want to have more fish people want to have more chicken in the developing world so”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And within that, let's call it agriculture subportfolio. There are the farms. You also mentioned venture capital or just businesses or maybe stocks. What are the layers that you've deployed assets into different agriculture type investments?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To see what they're doing in terms of seed genetics. And we have a lot of great people who went to work for Monsanto. And so, you know, the whole seed business is very different today from what it was 20 years ago. But there's a lot of interesting science, a lot of great companies coming out of Venturespace into a growth equity stage and being snapped up by larger food or other companies. So it's looking really good and it's probably one of the most interesting things I've tackled so far.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the thing that I find particularly interesting about farming and about ag as an asset class is that the arable land is finite. We're not going to make more. The existing land can be more productive, but you have to take really good care of it, right? You can't overplant, overuse. And so I find it very funny that farmers tend to be very conservative people politically, but they're like the original tree huggers because these are the people that really understand that if you don't take care of your land, you will ruin it. So that I think that at the margin, all this means that labor costs go down, productivity goes up, and waste and input costs go down because you're not blanketing the entire field with either water or fertilizer. You're just using what you need to get the maximum yield. And then, you know, it blows your mind.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, a guy can easily manage 150 acres these days because technology and farming is just like the oil service industry. It's amazing. Not just the equipment, but the genetics and the seeds, the drones for irrigation, the infrared, look through to see where actually to water, not to water. So I view agriculture really as a really high-tech industry and as a result greater productivity of the land, but also fewer people can farm larger plots of land. So it's fascinating what's going on in terms of the evolution of technology in agriculture.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not as yet, and I think it's because we said all right, if we're going to take these into the endowment and if we're going to commit not to hold them forever, but to hold them for the foreseeable future, that basically says that this is not a saleable asset. So we go, okay, it's going to be pooled, but we're going to put it below the line. We recognize that this is the kind of asset that has a number of different goals. We don't take in anything that doesn't pass what I would call an institutional due diligence process. So far, since I've been there, we've only accepted two relatively large farms. And I think we would like, we're hoping very much to get more gifts as we go into this new fundraising campaign. Have you spent any time on a farm recently, Ted?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I've known you for 10 years. I never knew you went to the University of Illinois. So it's a very modest Midwestern place. Frankly, we could use a little more sizzle. I'm amazed at the amount of talent from our grads across a number of disciplines. So the internet was, in fact, invented at the university. Netscape was invented at the University of Illinois.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Single cow. And so obviously I tried to nod very seriously and say, hmm, and this was a cow that was going to Produce more milk, and so there was a venture capital kind of improvement angle to it. And I said, sir, you do realize I can't buy a cow. And so he went away very sad, but that's probably the weirdest thing I've been pitched. You know, we have 40 managers in the portfolio, but we have committed to at least having a conversation with every alum because we feel it's part of our mission and we have one alum in the portfolio whose terrific healthcare investor. But in general, one of my other big projects like AG is to figure out how to best harness all this great alumni talent. I'm convinced that you ask people for money, they give you advice, but if you ask them for advice, they give you money. I want to create an alumni advisory network because the talent around the world across asset classes is amazing.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of ag derivatives, and we have a talking group across disciplinary group that meets, and we're really trying to figure out how to get better at this both directly and also as a theme through the portfolio. And I think that figuring out what your competence is from a mission standpoint, I mean, I can't be Stanford Inventure Capital, but we can be really good in this. So agriculture is the long-term strategic goal of our endowment program.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of these, so the people who own farms farming, unfortunately, is no longer a father, son, mother, daughter type of business, so that farmers are, the owners are absentee and they're run by people who run the farms. And so we retain the relationship with the people running the farm. There's lots of farm management banks and trust companies in central Illinois that do that, but we are now on the cusp of figuring out how can we bring this in-house and we're going to create our own internal farm management unit so that those people will be part of the investment team, but they'll probably sit just for, you know, it's logical for them to sit, not in Chicago, but where the farms are. But there's tons of expertise there. And then we're also talking a lot with the faculty because ag economics and finance are really strong at University of Illinois so that these are the people that invented all kinds of”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have this direct portfolio that's managed on the ground. A lot of it is in central Illinois. And then we said, all right, let's talk to all the really smart agribusiness PE venture capital growth equity type people in the ag and food space. And we have a number of really, really storied graduates from the university in the profession. And we just have spent the last three, four years talking to a lot of public and private groups and have made some investments outside of, you know, we said, okay, we got central Illinois. We have investments in Brazil and also in sub-Saharan Africa. So the general theme is that we can feed the world if we get more efficient. And so so much value is lost through the chain of distribution around the world that we're looking for companies that figure out.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, AG, University of Illinois has a long and storied history in agriculture. Agriculture is a great asset class for an endowment because it is very long-term and the cycles are long. Fortunately or unfortunately the last cycle peaked in 2012, but AG really was the best performing asset class for the decade ending 2012. It has components of real assets, but also of private equity. So we are in the wonderful position of being given, gifted farms. So we have about $150 million in gifted farms. And we recognize, you know, people are very attached to their farms, not like a donation of stock. And so if our donors understand that we're not going to dump the asset immediately, they are very happy about that. So we have started retaining all gifted farms to the foundation from donors.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“$1.7 billion are advantageous is the fact that we're large enough to be relevant and also small enough to be relevant so that I believe we've gotten good at identifying talent earlier and figuring out ways to partnership over the long term with younger managers. We have put some people in business. We've been in Founders Share class. I feel very comfortable now figuring out ways to get comfortable with the business risk of a newer firm. And also we're doing more oddball strategies. We like orthogonal strategies that are pre-institutional and in those I include things like we're doing a lot of agriculture which is a core competence of the institution. We've done some litigation finance. So we're looking there's really nothing that we won't look at. We've done some co-investments.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk about. So we eliminated hedge funds from the vocabulary and we eliminated alternatives from the we don't talk about alternatives or hedge funds. We talk about equities, credit, inflation linked things, et cetera.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the anchor to windward bucket, again, the nautical analogies. We have global sovereigns. We have the little 3% cash. It's a one to three-year duration type of investment. We have a real estate in there. We have our real assets in there. And we have our global inflation linked investments in there. And some are passive, some are active, some are public, and some are private. Once you don't have to really be focused on liquidity, once we realize that and got comfortable knowing that I wouldn't need to distribute much more than was coming in over the course of the fiscal year, I thought, let's just put everything together and make decisions not based on these increasingly unhelpful categories that consultants.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's, I don't think I was particularly creative. We need growth. So you got your growth coming from global equities. Hedge funds are a fee structure or a legal entity so that I don't care if it's a hedged equity directionally long hedge fund or private equity, it's equity. So we put everything public and private into that 63% in global equity. And then the category of non-sovereign credit stuff and that could be anything that's not a sovereign bond or a global inflation link security. So we have a very eclectic group of managers within this category. In general, it's a diversifying part of the portfolio. So we have growth, you have diversifying growth, and then you have the things that work when nothing else is working.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So if your assocations of global equities, global credit, things that go up in the night, that's now the official category for whatever we're calling that, what's the logic? That's quite different from asset classes. It's also different from risk factors. So how did you get there?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Types of strategies of managers into the portfolio to work in a higher interest rate environment or a higher inflation environment, et cetera.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was large enough for me to wonder if I should put in the policy so we wouldn't look so stupid. I think one fiscal year in it might have been 12 to 14, I won't say 14%. Right now it's to the point where we don't have to worry about it, it's around 3%. And I have also the kind of flow experience of three or four years of seeing that gifts do really tend to match our distribution. So unlike many other institutions, and we're about to go into a big fundraising campaign, I don't actively worry about liquidity. On the other hand, I am a big believer in keeping some dry powder for a rainy day and even though I don't think investing for Armageddon is a good strategy, I do think a lot about building intrinsic hedges in terms of the”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the market for five years, so I'm sure I made tons of mistakes, but the portfolio is now kind of largely rebuilt, about 90% rebuilt after four years.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when the market was going straight up, that was a drag. But when the market was going down, we looked brilliant. The hardest thing was how do you move quickly when you don't like anything? And so as a result, I probably dragged my feet a lot on reallocating the money, especially in the longer term parts of the portfolio. So I tried to move as quickly, but as carefully as possible. Latin expression is Festina Lente, you know, move it, but be very careful. And I did get some criticism from some board members, why aren't you buying ETFs in these areas where you haven't reallocated the money? And I made the decision, I feel very strongly that cash psychologically is very different from an ETF or any other page mark or a bookmarker type of asset class. And I was, I've been worried.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the past, there was nothing wrong at all with a portfolio, but it probably was not taking enough equity-like risk. And also inflows kind of matched out flows. So I really felt that liquidity was not a huge issue. And a lot of my work with the committee revolved around getting comfortable with the fact. And I thought they could handle a reasonable amount of mark-to-market volatility. So, you know, wrote guidelines on what I thought should be the things that we would focus on. And it's taken, you know, like everyone else, I was ready for interest rates to go up back in 2013. So I started thinking about how could I position the portfolio for a higher interest rate environment. I made the conscious decision not to invest. I had a lot of cash inflows from the fund of funds.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have a very simplified asset allocation of global equity, global credit, and then things that go bump in the night section. So it's really an 80-20 technical asset as things that go bump in the night section. What is Bruce Greenwall calls that not the rainy day fun. It's just like when that hits the fan part of the portfolio. Sorry, I don't want my kids to be upset. So our real minimum break-even return is funding the university and the foundation. So this has to be a growth and return-oriented portfolio.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's turn a little bit to the structure of the portfolio. I'm thinking five years you're talking 2012, which for the most part, I think a lot of investors weren't talking any differently about capital market pricing than they are today. Things felt overpriced, hard to know where to look for value. How did you set up that kind of de novo asset all because you have this challenge? Now there's a billion dollars here. You can set it up however you want. What did that asset allocation look like? And how did you think about it?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investment policy, short to terminology, a conflict of interest policy, a governance policy statement. I didn't have one before. So we got all that documentation agreement voting bylaws, et cetera, done by the June meeting. So that was a lot to ask of the group. And we also set the new asset allocation by June of that year. So we were kind of ready to go six months into my tenure there. And then I started working on the portfolio, found an office in June. That year, moved in, hired a chief of staff, and then kind of concurrently started staffing up and also working on the portfolio.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you have everything to do, it's easy to get overwhelmed. I believe that the reason I was successful in accomplishing a lot in a short period of time was that all the big gnarly stuff was agreed upon prior to my hire. So I had a list of 15 things I decided it's always good to start with the most difficult things. So I spent the first six months on governance and it was very hard not to do anything in the portfolio, but I really felt that if we got the governance framework in place, there would be plenty of time to work on the portfolio. So we had to figure out a way to shrink the size of the investment committee from, I believe it was around 16 or 17 in half. Everyone agreed that that needed to be done and we needed to do it in the most diplomatic way possible. And I think we did reasonably well. And then all the policy.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when you first show up, there's so much to do, and it's just you, but you mentioned the board had already decided to go in the direction. How do you start to prioritize your time to move forward in the direction that you want to?”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“across the board. I've been fairly convinced that when you look at life cycles of firms and town and how in particular the hedge fund industry, but I think this applies to any asset management or investment manager, it's just very hard to maintain the same entrepreneurial tendencies and focus after 10, 15 years and especially after you cross over certain thresholds of AUM.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's, you know, I always use nautical analogies given my father's background, but you're deconstructing the ship while it's still in motion so that you cannot do a radical thing or else the ship will sink. So that on the margin, I would say that it took longer than it might have taken given all the moving parts and that I had to staff up at the same time. I think you”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is very true. And that was and continues to be a big challenge for us, especially in private asset classes. The portfolio was well managed, but with maybe larger AUM managers, but there were four fund to fund relationships that I inherited and the budget for the investment office was being migrated from the advisory fees paid to the external advisors. And so that was a process. This takes time. I started with No Team, this portfolio of fund of funds, and I didn't even have a telephone.”
2017-10-02 · Capital Allocators · Ellen Ellison – Playing to Your Strengths (Capital Allocators, EP.27) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source