YouSaid · the spoken record

Kim Lew

lines on the record: 104
first: 2020-08-17
most recent: 2020-08-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When you have a top heavy organization, it puts natural pressure on both the compensation and the responsibilities that you can give to junior people on the team. And we have a highly talented team. Eventually, they were going to feel like they were being impinged upon. And so when we hired them, they were young in their careers. So having your CIO follow you around to meetings wasn't so offensive because, you know, you could learn from them and it was great. But after you've been doing it for five years, why are you still going with me to meetings? So the good thing about it is that right around the time when it started to be uncomfortable for them, and no one ever expressed it, but it was clear that they did not need us in the same way that they needed us when we first became CIOs. We both had the opportunity to take on a lot of outside responsibilities, so board, roles, and just steering committees. We both took mentorship very seriously with other young women.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge difference. And I think that we could have been partners forever because you think about any of our fund managers who have partnerships. But I don't think the team could have handled that partnership forever. Why is that?”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God, performance appraisals. Not even the actual doing of performance appraisals, the writing up of performance appraisals. So we would divide those. Someone had to do a budget every year. So one year she'd do the budget. The next year I would do the budget. The audit. So someone had to be responsible for the audit. We switched back and forth on the audit. Signing contracts. So one year I signed contracts, just all that stuff that's not investment decisions, we just divided them. And so that was wonderful. And the things that we worried about that could potentially divide us as a partnership was largely the relationship with the investment committee. We did all those meetings together. And we were very careful about not meeting ever with a member of the investment committee without the other one. And so people couldn't have favorites. They had to take us as a package. And I think that made it”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So your job was to know other ways that you could possibly get access to the same sort of exposure Taking on either lower fees or more liquidity or whatever, or just maybe a better match for the portfolio, a more aligned manager. So it's devil's advocacy in that way. And so that when actually pretty well. And then the things that everyone hates about being a CIO, we divided.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god. And there are a ton of them, ton of them in my class. And she did real estate and resources. And I did private's adventure. Way we structured it is if you were the primary, your job was to really help the director's source and think about their strategy and support them in their work. And if you were the secondary, you were the devil's advocate, not the devil's advocate in that I am going to second guess the quality of your underwriting, but the devil's advocate in I am playing an asset allocation role. So you've recommended this thing. Have you thought about whether this is a better way to get that exposure? Here is this venture manager in healthcare, but here's this in the public market. We get more liquidity, so there's more volatility. What do we care? Healthcare manager in the public market.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the most efficient way It was, at least for me, she's a much more generous person. But for me, I was like, you put us in this position. We're going to make it work for ourselves. Like, we're not going to not be good fiduciaries, but you've created a situation that we're both kind of stuck. And so we're going to make the best of this. And so she took on emerging markets because she had been in the emerging markets and I took developed markets, but she took Japan and I took Latin America. So we each had both had emerging and developed and we both had different parts of the public market. I took long short. She took event driven opportunistic, but there were some relationships in this long short that she had a close relationship and she kept and there was some of the inventions.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there were two big tenants that drove how we structured it. One, we each had to be managing a full diverse portfolio so that when we went out to interview for jobs later on, we could say we had played the role of a CIO managing across asset classes. So it wasn't a you do publics and I do privates or you do illiquids. And, you know, we just, we wanted to divide it down the middle. So we each got a private part of the private portfolio and we each got part of the public portfolio, but there was a lot of fluidity.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And honestly, I thought it would be me because this was Meredith's home, right? She'd been working at Carnegie basically her whole career. Not that she hadn't worked in other places, but the bulk of her career had been at Carnegie. She loved it. And I had moved around. And I had worked other places and I had said to her explicitly, if this is painful and this is a threat to our friendship, I will leave and we'll be fine kind of thing. So let's just sit down and figure out how we make this work for the two of us.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was presented to us in a way that we could not say no, quite honestly. So we both said, yeah, I guess this could work and come to each other and said, this is crazy. I mean, we sat down and we were like, this is crazy. And then we went back and forth like, how are we going to decide on this? How are we going to do this? And we actually had a conversation if this doesn't work. Years from now, one of us will leave.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He shared an office all through this process. So while we were interviewing, we were sharing an office. Wow. And so it'd be like, okay, so who are you going to see today? Oh, I'm going to see so and so. And so, you know, it was both uncomfortable and comfortable because this is my friend, right? And there was a part of me that wished her well, even though I wanted to get the job and I'm sure it was the same thing with her. She wanted the job, but this is her friend. She wished me well. So we kind of lock ourselves in the room and”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if this works, but I delegated this responsibility to a committee, and this is the committee's recommendation, and it is not for me to second guess the committee. So I don't know how you guys are going to make this work. Good luck, go with God, kind of thing. And it was so gay. So your locks.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then my guess is, and so I don't know, my guess is that there was disagreement on what to do about that. And so Jeff, having spent, I've significantly been a part of his career at Goldman, thought the CIO, this co-CIO thing has worked in the past and he recommended it. And I think it was kind of split the baby. We're going to split this baby. We're going to give them both this title and tell them to work it out And there was a lot of people on the committee who thought this is not good, who expressed to us, we're giving this a try. We don't have a lot of confidence in this, but we're going to give it a try. Our president. Brought us both in together. And he was like, This is odd.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she had Goldman Sachs experience, and I did not. And so I thought this was bananas. I mean, I could not believe that they had put us in this position. So the chair of our investment committee was a Goldman Sachs person A wise decision that they made was we're going to look at the internal candidates first. If we believe that the internal candidates have the capacity to manage this portfolio, we will not do a search. If we don't, then we will do a search. I think very quickly they decided. One of these two people could do this, they will need support, but they could do it. So we don't have to do an external search.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public managers over a certain threshold. I think it might have been like $200 million. Everything else was done just by the CIO. And so that creates very different dynamics just by nature of it, different documentation, different institutional histories, different relationship with managers in many respects. So they're very different. It was a privilege to work at two places that had arguably been successful, but did it very different ways”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Carnegie has an investment committee made up of both board members and advisors, and every investment decision is presented to the investment committee for approval. Now, the committee is very well aware that we have hired professional managers who know this market well. They trust those managers. And so in the whole time that I've been here, and as far as I know ever, there's only Nothing goes to committee except for public at the time. I think it's different. So I'm speaking about history.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“about your portfolio management too. You can think this. We've been doing the same thing for 100 years. When the investment people say we're investing for 100 years in our minds, we can appreciate that when the president has been the president for 20 years, you can think of it that way. I think at organizations where the leadership changes a lot, where the strategy of the overall organization changes more often, it's harder to see things long term. So I think all of that translated into different strategies for managing the portfolio. And how did that portfolio?”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Silos, what happened in one portfolio had nothing to do with what happened in another portfolio, so sometimes they didn't work in tandem. There was delegation at the Ford Foundation. There wasn't delegation at Carnegie. Carnegie had a real reverence and appreciation for its founder in a way that the Ford Foundation did not. And I think that translated into the relationship between investments and the program area. And ultimately into how investments were done in some respects, all of that fed into each other. I think that fact fed into how they chose their leaders and how the program changed because the Ford Foundation's program and what they did has changed a lot pretty dramatically where Carnegie's has not. And I think that when you have that kind of long-term consistency of thought, it translates into how you think.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, there are people who are good at that, and they can make money at that, and it'll be a much more volatile portfolio. And sometimes I say to myself, well, foundation can take volatility because our 5% is based on whatever our assets are. So it is a variable number. And so maybe, in fact, foundations could manage money. And Ford Foundation did manage money that way. Whereas Ellen had come from Yale. She believed in the endowment model or the Yale model, and it was a highly diversified portfolio. And a lot of idiosyncratic investments in it, so strategic-wise, they were opposites. Ellen ran the portfolio as one portfolio with, yes, there were people who headed certain asset classes, but there was an internal investment committee that looked at everything. And so everybody knew about everything and things were traded off against each other at the Ford Foundation. It was run in silos. And as a result of it being run in...”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a million ways to make money. It's all in how you implement a strategy and how consistent you are and what skill set you have. So I think managing a portfolio the way she managed that portfolio means that you have to believe you are skilled at tactical allocation because you have to move that portfolio around a lot. So you have to have tactical skills and you have to have a team that has tactical skills. You have to know a lot more about derivatives and structuring. Different thing”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Describe some of those differences. So at the time. The Ford Foundation was run very much in the traditional mode of running portfolios. Linda at the time didn't believe in hedge funds, the private equity portfolio was 10%. That was it. She felt very strongly that anything that you could do in these alternative markets you could do with public securities. You just had to weight them the right way and think about your portfolio construction. So it's a very traditional 70-30, maybe 60, 30, 10 portfolio.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was such serendipity, and she called me, and I think had it not been for that, I might not have even thought about it. But I did. And then I literally left in May, shockingly 13 years to the day of when I started the Four Foundation. Actually, my last day was my first day, 13 years earlier. And then I started at Carnegie”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me and she said, Ellen has an ad out for an analyst, but I bet if you were willing to come, she would make it a director's position. So you should come and speak to her. And it would be great because I'm going to stay as an advisor. It'll be great to work together. So you should talk to Ellen. And I'd known Ellen, not as well as I knew Meredith, but I knew her. And so Ellen and I spent a couple of months talking to each other. And it literally I had come back from maternity leave in January from my second kid. And things were different at Ford and I knew that I was going to have to start looking for something else. And it felt like here it is. It's coming just at the right time.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's interesting because even though Meredith came into the business after I did, we came to the private equity business together at the same time. So she joined Ellen Schumann in 99. And remember I started in end of 99, beginning of 2000. So we came to the business at the same time. Ford was a lot bigger than Carnegie is, was and is a lot bigger. And so we had more of a portfolio. I think when they started when out, they had one buyout and one venture manager and they were building out a portfolio. And so we became friends because we would co-invest in things together and we had kids around the same age as each of our oldest are a year apart and our youngest are a year apart. And so we just happen to have a lot of things going on at the same time. And so when she was leaving to go to Hong Kong, she called.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I know that in that period of time, I guess one of those peers that you spend time talking to is Meredith Jenkins. And at some point in time, you didn't retire, but you did leave the Ford Foundation.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“managers, that's what made them become known as the smart money because you were doing these sort of more Better than others, the concept of the foundations being really steady and reliable sources of capital was prevalent and everybody believed that it changed after 2008 when people were not as stable of source of capital. But at the time, every buyout fund wanted the foundations in it. And so people came to you too. Lots of over-the-transom PPMs, and that's still the case. We still get tons of things over the transom. It's just that they have other options now. And so the power dynamic is different.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There weren't nearly as many sources of capital back then as there are now. And so the competition for getting into these things was very different. And also, as much as the Foundation and Endowment Community is the bit insular now, it was even more so at the time. So for sure, if you were at another foundation and you found this great manager, you would tell your peers at other foundations, I found this great manager, you should look at them too. Now, not everybody did everything together, obviously, but part of your sourcing was other people. And those managers didn't have a lot of options because the pension funds weren't investing at the time. We didn't have all the sovereign wealth money. You had corporates in. You had strategic sin in some way, but it was a very different environment. And so the foundations in the endowment community had a lot more leverage. So you had leverage with...”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you dive into, now they call it private equity, but the old buyout portfolio then, so almost 20 years ago, geez. What was it like in sourcing managers if you compare that to picking up something relatively new today or trying to put capital to work in a new area today and sourcing new managers today?”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they're trying to diversify the buyout portfolio. So that was a good time to be there. There was stuff to be done. We also had just a very big venture portfolio. We had to figure out what to do with now that things had come undone. So it was a good time to try something new.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as a result, I went on maternity leave. I came back and the world was different. And there wasn't a distribution portfolio anymore. And so I started investing in private equity and venture funds. And at the time, Ford had a particularly large venture portfolio. The board in prior iterations had been a lot of captains of industry who had been the victims of hostile takeovers. And so they felt that the LBO market was unsavory. So they did not allow the four foundations to invest in buyouts, but they would let them invest in venture. So they had a huge venture portfolio and not a very big buyout portfolio. And so that's why they had so much in distributions.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish I could say that I was a brilliant investor, but again, here I will talk about the importance of luck because I was pregnant and we literally had about $1.9 billion in our distribution portfolio because the distributions were coming so fast that we literally were losing stock certificates because people were sending them in the mail. And back then the transfer agents were not efficient. They couldn't handle the volume of distributions. And so I thought to myself, I'm going on maternity leave. I need to sell everything before I leave because they're coming so fast that by the time I get back from maternity leave, there'll be a whole new portfolio to manage. And I can't have this portfolio be $3 billion while I'm gone. So I'm going to sell it. So as you know, I wish I could say it was brilliant, but I got $1.8 billion sold before the World fell apart. And I told them all the time if I was still in the public.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of May of 2000, and Betty was retiring December of 99. So they wanted me to start in January of 2000. That's why I thought I'm not even going to be here that long before I go maternally leave. I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do. So at the time, this was before Reg FD, I was on the road all the time and I followed the technology industry. So I was working late a lot because they would do stock announcements late at night for all the reasons you can imagine. So I thought this is going to be a better job because I'm not going to have to travel as much. It's a long-term asset class, even though it's stock picking. It'll be a better fit for me with a small baby. So I said yes. And I moved over and the world fell apart.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then she retired, which is short of seven years, about six and a half. So six and a half years she retired. She came to me and she said, I'm retiring. Eric Dobstad is going to be the person who takes over the private portfolio because he had been working with her for three years. She had brought him up from legal to work with her in privates. And she goes, but he's never been an investor. The way Ford managed their portfolio at the time, it was very siloed. And so the private portfolios distributed tech stocks were managed by the private portfolio. And she said, he's not done investing in public markets before. So I want you to come over and do manage that distribution portfolio. And at the time, I hadn't told them yet, but I was pregnant with my first daughter. And I said, I'm pregnant. I don't know if this is the right time.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the importance of having people like that in your life is a tremendous. And so I'm forever thankful. And I think because of that, I feel an incredible obligation to do that for other people and to serve in a mentoring role and to really commit to that with people.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What else am I going to do? And so it ended up being an amazing experience. And I had a conversation with her maybe about six months ago. And we were talking, and I made this point to her, like how important that relationship was to me and that I was so grateful for her. And it was just, you know, thanking her for that. And she was like, I don't know what you're talking about. She was like, I didn't take a chance on you. She was like, you were better educated than I was when I started this. You had more experience. You done more than I don't know why you saw it that way because I didn't see it that way. And it was a total perspective because, in fact, she did take a chance. But she was like, I learned it. I figured you could, right? Yeah.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conference, maybe the second or third day of me working at the Ford Foundation, and they kept talking about ATM. And I was like, what does a cash machine have to do with what they're talking about? And obviously they were not talking about cash machines. I was completely lost, but she took a chance. And I felt so beholden to the fact that she was taking this chance on me that I worked late. I killed myself. And I was like, I'm going to make her proud. I'm going to make her feel like this risk that she's taking was a good risk to take. And it was easy because all my friends were investment bankers, right? And I worked at the Ford Foundation where everybody went home at five o'clock because this was everyone's final job before they retired. No one stuck around. And so I stayed until, you know, nine or ten o'clock because none of my friends came, got out of work until 9 or 10 because they were investment bankers. And what was I going to go home for? So it looked like I was working really hard when I thought.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, director of all research and head of private equity. She had been the person who picked the tech stocks. So the role that they hired me for was her job and director of research. But then she decided to do private equity. And that's why they were hiring. And so she said, I'll help her and I'll work with her, and it'll be fine. And so the first, maybe second day that I was there, first or second day I was there, she sat me down and she was like, look, you're never going to be good at this job if you don't take risks. We're in the business of taking risks. You do not have to be right all the time. You only have to be right 51% of the time and you can be great at this job. And more importantly, if you mess up, I'll fix it. So just go out.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What his mother did, but he said my mother's looking for somebody, and she does investments. You should call her. And maybe you can work with her. And I had been doing fixed income at Prudential. And they were looking for an equity analyst to follow the tech sector. It couldn't be more different than what I was doing. But I went to talk to his mom. We hit it off. And I mean, just, she was an amazing, amazing woman. I lay at her feet sort of a lot of who I became as an investor. And she was the luck that you need to be successful, right? You know, like people think it's all skill. She was so much my luck. So she and I hit him off. She had meet with Linda Strump, who was the CIO at the time. Linda and I got along. And then they introduced me to a gentleman named Hal Clark, who was the portfolio manager for the public equity portfolio, because at the time, Ford managed a huge, a third of their book was managed internally. People picking stocks, and that's what they were hiring for. And so Betty agreed, if they hired me, to have me have a dotted line reporting relationship to her. So she was like, I'll teach her the business.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my little brother ended up being this guy named Perry Fagan. And Perry Fagan's mother was a woman named Betty Fagan, who was the director of research at the Ford Foundation. And Perry knew nothing about finance or investing.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had been, and tell me if you know anything about this program, there was a Big Brother, Big Sister program at HBS. Do you remember that? Yeah.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Prudential had been a really good place to go because they did a lot of creative stuff, really a lot of structuring, a lot of bond stuff, things had fallen apart, and they went down to only doing lending, basically. It became plain vanilla. It just wasn't an interesting job. It was just like being back in commercial banking. And worse yet, they fired a bunch of people. They honored the offers from the three of us. They'd given offers to, but they had fired a bunch of people. So it was a pretty hostile environment. And I had five managing directors in the 22 months I was there. So I knew that this was not going to work. And so I started looking for a job.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I escaped there and I went to Prudential and I did private placements. So I went there originally, I graduated in 92. Now I should say every year that I graduate or I change jobs is a sign that something bad's going to happen. I graduated from college in 87. The market fell apart. 92, horrible market.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I can't remember the professor's name, but I took Biggie and he called our first midterm exam. He called me into his office. And he said I was reading the exams. And then I came to your exam. And I was shocked at how well you had done on this exam because you never raised your hand. He goes, I am going to fail you. You will loop this class if you don't stop raising your hand. And I was like, oh my God. And it was the sheer panic of it. But I still, it was painful for me. Every single time. But I thought that this was how I was going to break free.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm gonna have to speak. And then that's gonna make the difference for me. It didn't work. I almost looped a couple of classes because I struggled with raising my hand. And I remember they probably still had it when you were the biggie class business government in this.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't want to go to HBS. I wanted to go back to Penn. I wanted to go to Stanford and I got waitlisted at Stanford. And I got into Penn, I got to Harvard. And I said, I'm going back to Wharton. I did amazing job there. People know me, love me. It felt comfortable. It was home. And again, my dad was like, that's crazy. You've done that. You've got to try something different. And quite honestly, I went because I really struggled with public speaking. Really struggled with public speaking. And I thought if I go to HBS, it's going to force me.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years And then I went to HPS. Yeah. And, you know, quite honestly, I loved the work, but it was a tough environment. So it was time for me to leave.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly And it was a great program. Those programs back then were amazing. They really taught you how to be an analyst. There was the investment banking programs, which were different, but the commercial banking programs and just learning credit, I was an accounting and an organizational behavior major because I loved accounting, but I went for my first accounting interview and the person I interviewed with interviewed me the whole time in the fetal position. And I was like, this personality and that person is never going to match. So I need to find another use for this accounting degree. And everybody was like, try commercial banking. Maybe that'll be a good fit. And it was and I loved it.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's so funny because I actually, when I was applying to high school, at the time, there was a high school in New York's John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx that had a dental program. And if you graduated from that high school, you graduated already able to be a dental assistant. And I wanted to be a dentist. Why did I want to be a dentist? Because it seemed like a good job. And I wanted to be a doctor. I was at Bronx Science and I was good at science and math and I wanted to be a doctor and I didn't like blood. So I was like, I was like, I either be an eye doctor or I'll be a dentist. And this program came along and I was like, I'm going to do that. My father was like, stop it. That's ridiculous. Going to be a dental assistant. You're not going to be a dentist. And there went from. So, what's first?”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's where I applied, and that's where I went. And I was going to Bronx Science here in the city at the time, so it wasn't crazy. I mean, everybody, I knew what the Ivies were, but getting to that particular place had everything to do with it. And I will say I went for school visit to visit Penn and loved it the moment I was on campus. Because I think that, you know, I was a city kid The Bronx in Harlem, and I had never traveled any place or gone anyplace before. And it just felt more familiar. We had gone to Princeton on the same trip and it just was too foreign to me and it just did not feel comfortable.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, probably the biggest thing I think is that my education was hugely important for my family, huge, especially my father. And people talk about tiger moms. I had a tiger dad. And my mom was sort of the peacemaker to keep it all from getting too far away. And so actually probably the biggest impact it had on my schooling, quite honestly, was my decision to go to Penn. My father had a very typical immigrant feelings about certain things. And at the time, he worked as a clerk at AT&T. And Charlie Brown, who was the president of AT&T at the time, had gone to Wharton. And he was like, you're going to Wharton.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With my mom. And so when soon as they were able to get married, they got married, and they've been together since. And so I was born, like I said, when they were 17 and then my brother was born when they were 24 because they had to wait till they were adults. Imagine that. A 24-year-old thinks that they're an adult.”
2020-08-17 · Capital Allocators · [REPLAY] Kim Lew – The Carnegie Way (Capital Allocators, EP.52) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source