Chief Investment Officer

The Most Daring CIOs As this issue of CIO will be distributed during our eighth annual awards gala, many of you will be holding it hot off the press at the New York Public Library. You’ll be congratulating your friends and enjoying post-event cocktails on one of our most festive nights of the year. Tonight, and throughout this issue, we partake in that wonderfully human experience of learning from other innovators. It’s a beautiful thing that such learning actually stimulates our brains to release the pleasure-inducing hormone oxytocin. Learning from each other has connected us all from the beginning of civilization, from when our very survival depended on being able to anticipate, adapt, and thrive (Ha, I guess, not much has changed).

When we first started planning this year’s innovation awards, we knew we’d be
searching for the daring. Following 2016, a record year for funding ETFs, many found 2017
a hard year to be innovative. As one CIO put it, “With ETFs gathering so much cash last
year, many boards directed CIOs toward passive investing and just riding the S&P. One
would have to be very courageous to be innovative this year.”
So, we dug deeper into our conversations with CIOs to find out exactly what would
make one innovative in an environment with growing frontier economies, a new president,
unwinding stimulus, and high valuations.

What we found was that many of you have been innovative by diving into first-time funds, traveling to far-flung emerging markets to investigate opportunities, diving into new real estate opportunities, and being early to investments such as African equities. Others have been individualistic and contrarian, but charismatic enough to court top general partners. Some CIOs revamped their portfolios to be cognizant of climate change, and embedded ESG standards into the fabric of their organizations. One used his investing power to hold Big Oil’s feet to the fire and demand more climate-related risk disclosure from ExxonMobil. Another invested in energy debt. One turned to active management for the first time. Yet another managed 150 plans through a digital infrastructure to achieve 24%+ returns over the past four years, and another has set up his investment team to snatch venture capital opportunities..

As our lifetime honoree Ash Williams said, the team building, which is such a huge part of your jobs, is often the work that seems invisible. Yet without it, results would suffer. Some of our CIOs have completely revamped their investment teams—one to dig out of a bottom-quartile hole for a risk-managed approach; another to transform one of the largest retirement systems in the US to attract talent to one of its most expensive cities.

As you know, there is no way we can actually give you the full details of our honorees’ plans and methods. But use this issue as a guide to root out the innovators you’d like to learn from. Also observe the lists of finalists on each page. Our choices were very difficult this year, as each finalist deserved to win in their own right. Take down their names, give them a holiday call, or catch lunch with them during one of our future events, such as our CIO Summit in the spring. I’ve never met one who has been unwilling to share. Also take note of the asset management winners: Their list was hewn by survey and extensive phone calls to CIOs, who told us who had truly done right by them this year. As always, this CIO community is all about learning, sharing, and keeping investors informed. It gives us all an edge over machines, every time. Heck, let’s celebrate what it is to be human.

Wishing you a lovely holiday season. —Christine Giordano, Editor

EDI TORIAL TEAM

Christine Giordano christine.giordano@strategic-i.com

Vishesh Kumar vishesh.kumar@strategic-i.com

Chris Butera chris.butera@strategic-i.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

SooJin C. Buzelli, svp soojin.buzelli@strategic-i.com

PUBLISHER

Katie Bacon, katie.bacon@strategic-i.com

EDI TORIAL CON TRIBUTION

Leslie Kramer, Bailey McCann, Amrita Sareen-Tak

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Lynn Connelly, Chris Kwon, Claire Merchlinsky, Tiffany Pai

CON TRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chris Buzelli, Suharu Ogawa, JooHee Yoon

RESEARCH & SURVEYS

Quinn Keeler, svp, quinn.keeler@strategic-i.com

CONFERENCES

Michael Garity, vp, Carol Popkins, vp, Katie Campbell, Ana-Alyse Castelluccio, Melissa Groccia, Lucille Velander

CUS TOM MEDIA PROGRAM MANAGER Drew Donaldson, drew.donaldson@ strategic-i.com

REPRINTS MANAGER

Michelle Judkins, michelle.judkins@ strategic-i.com

SUBSCRIP TION INQUIRIES

JaCkie Scott, jackie.scott@strategic-i.com

CORPORATE

Chief Investment Officer is a Strategic Insight business.

Joel Mandelbaum, Ceo jmandelbaum@strategic-i.com

Karl Jaeger, Cfo karl.jaeger@strategic-i.com

Tony White, managing direCtor tony.white@strategic-i.com

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Chief Investment Officer (ISSN 2166-2142)

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