Ellen Ellison is the Chief Investment Officer of the University of Illinois Foundation, which she joined in 2013 as its first leader of the now $1.7 billion pool of assets. Ellen restarted a program and a portfolio from scratch at a time when longer-established University investment offices already had their chips carefully placed in the markets. Yet with a small team, she built a clever portfolio and is starting to reap its rewards. Prior to joining Illinois, Ellen was the Executive Director of Investments at the University of Miami for five years, the leader of a small family office for a year, and a thirteen-year veteran of Fiduciary Trust Company.  She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University Business School, and currently sits on the Investment Committee for Mount Holyoke. Our conversation starts with Ellen’s career path and dives into the challenge of starting an endowment investment program from the ground up, including establishing governance practices and figuring out when to put cash to work when markets feel pricey. Her favorite opportunities in the market, including a long discussion of agriculture investing, offers a very different take on the world today. For more episodes, go to capitalallocatorspodcast.com/podcast Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides

Scott Malpass is the esteemed Vice President and CIO of Notre Dame, where he oversees the University’s $12 billion endowment. Scott earned his B.A. and M.B.A. degrees at Notre Dame, and returned to South Bend at the ripe age of 26 following a brief stint on Wall Street. His track record for almost 30 years, as defined by both performance and impact, place him indisputably in rare company at the very top of the field. Among his many accolades, Scott received Institutional Investor’s Endowment Manager of the Year award, NACUBO’s Rodney H. Adams Award, and CIO Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  He has taught students at Notre Dame since 1995 and among other directorships and advisory councils, he serves on the Boards of the Vatican Bank, Vanguard, and TIFF, and previously served on the Investment Advisory Committee for Major League Baseball. In 2014, Scott became part of the founding group for Catholic Investment Services, Inc., a not-for-profit offering top tier investment solutions to Catholic organizations nationally. Our conversation is a full-blown master class on endowment management, including the benefits of a long tenured team, asset allocation frameworks, passive management, preparing for dislocations, the state of venture capital, sourcing, monitoring and exiting managers, incremental process improvements, professional and personal development, and education and alignment across constituencies. It’s hard not to be in awe of Scott’s combination of humility, experience, and success. For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Join Ted’s mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com   Show Notes 3:26 – How Scott got started at Notre Dame  6:22 – Why tenure of the staff is so long on Scott’s team  8:26 – How did he handle bad hires among such a tight knit team  9:37 – Committee makeup  11:18 – How the continuity and depth of institutional knowledge allowed them to make better decisions  12:51 – Their first single asset real estate investment  14:21 – What is the best use of time for the investment team, managing a direct investment or researching new managers  15:07 – Core investment beliefs from Scott’s past that drive the portfolio  17:28 – Core investment beliefs that drive the portfolio today  20:43 – How does Scott think about portfolio construction techniques  22:49 – Factors they like to tilt towards  23:36 – Any concerns about the focus on active managers in a world that is moving towards passive  26:02 – How much of the US investing market should be indexed-based  27:37 – The baseline that Scott has to consider when making investment decisions  29:43 – Their focus on emerging and middle markets, particularly Europe  34:01 – Pricing in the venture capital markets today  36:31 – Implications of all of this new money moving into private market investing  37:40 – Do private equity owners make better decisions for businesses  39:52 – Scott’s manager selection process  41:44 – How much time does Scott spend with managers before making a decision to invest with them             43:14 – Jim Dunn podcast episode  44:04 – What has Scott learned about the behaviors of making that final decision on a manager 45:39 – Mistakes that Scott has learned from and corrected over the years 49:36 – Creative ways to monitor managers in the portfolio 52:08 – Scott sharing how special the managers in the portfolio are to them 54:49 – How would Scott think about an investment portfolio of $1,000,000,000 of cash 56:57 – Benefits and drawbacks of direct vs co-investments 59:43 – Biggest current subject of debate on an investment topic in the office 1:01:47 – Lessons from their annual offsite meetings 1:04:31 – Biggest concerns about the markets today and over the next 10 years 1:07:52 – Closing Questions