The Don't Get Fired Podcast!

The only way to get fired from a pension fund or sovereign fund is to… innovate. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration. But stepping outside the conventional and doing something new is a risky proposition for the employees of long-term investors. These are fiduciary bound, prudent person, civil society organizations, which are purposefully conservative and allergic to the failure that is inextricably linked with innovation! 

In the coming decade, we will need long-term investors to innovate to meet their return objectives, as well as deliver a range of positive externalities to the world. This podcast will seek to showcase how leaders of long-term investors can innovate without getting fired. Ashby Monk and Daniel Adamson interview investment professionals working in long-term investors about the big innovations they have accomplished.  

• Episode #16: Joseph Sáenz, Managing Director of Quantitative Analytics at Fremont Group discusses how this major single family office has tapped neurodiversity in the pursuit of differentiated portfolios that outperform.
• Episode #15: Brett Chatfield, Chief Investment Officer of the Construction and Building Unions Superannuation Fund discusses the power of long-term thinking and the direct connection of his fund's outperformance to the real economy.
• Episode #14: Kurt Braitberg, Managing Director of Public Markets at San Francisco Employees' Retirement System explains his fund's evolving approach to public equities and reflects on constructing -- and then reconstructing -- the active equities book.
• Episode #13: Kevin Bong, Chief Investment Strategist of the Alberta Investment Management Corp., explains the fund's new 'Multi-Model Model' of institutional investment, which is a client-centric approach that delivers everything everywhere (almost) all at once to 25 different portfolios. 
• Episode #12: Chris Ailman, Chief Investment Officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System reflects on his career bringing innovation to public pension funds, with particular focus on his three different "innovation labs" at CalSTRS. 
• Episode #11: Michael Cohen, Chief Operating Investment Officer of the California Public Employees Retirement System explains how he built a new and unique talent pipeline from universities to public pensions.
• Episode #10: Molly Murphy, Chief Investment Officer of the of The Orange County Employees Retirement System explains how she innovates from within the 'American Model', pushing her fund's consultants to work on truly innovate opportunities in the innovation ecosystem.
• Episode #9: Laura Glick, Chief Investment Officer of the Spencer Foundation Endowment in Chicago, offers an alternative to alternatives in their endowment's model, which is nothing like the Endowment Model.
• Episode #8: Barry Kenneth, Chief Investment Officer of the Pension Protection fund in the United Kingdom, offers details on the fund's dynamic capabilities, which has driven significant over-funding and a recent expansion of the fund's mandate.
• Episode #7: Simon Esposito, Deputy-Chief Investment Officer of Rest Super in Australia, offers details on the process by which the superfund designed, approved, and began implementing its new 1% allocation, or around $750M and growing, to impact investments.
• Episode #6: Sanford Rich, Executive Director of NYC BERS, reflects on his plan's 101-year path to reinventing asset-liability modeling via a unique partnership with academic researchers.
• Episode #5: Sonya Sawtell-Rickson, Chief Investment Officer of HESTA, discusses how the fund achieved top 10 investment performance, while ALSO delivering meaningful outcomes in impact investing.
• Episode #4: Mark Walker, Chief Investment Officer of the Coal Pension Trustees Services Limited, discusses how he helped usher in a new world of tech innovation at CPT, and what it means for the fund in terms of performance.
• Episode #3: Prabhu Palani, Chief Investment Officer of the of the City of San Jose's Retirement System, discusses his fund's unique approach to building a new venture capital allocation.
• Episode #2: Ian Patrick, Chief Investment Officer of Australian Retirement Trust, discusses the mega-merger of equals (QSuper and SunSuper) that led to this new, massive super fund... and reflects on the challenge of capturing all the benefits of this new scale.
• Episode #1: Nicole Musicco, Chief Investment Officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, discusses her fund's $1 billion bet on emerging managers.