CW: What were you like as a Dartmouth student?
PJ: I was atypical. I grew up in Chicago—a liberal, urban environment. I'm not particularly athletic and don't like cold weather. Some of Dartmouth's attractions didn't speak to me. I came here because I knew I'd have a rich array of liberal arts educational choices in an intimate learning setting.
CW: As chair of the Investment Committee, can you talk about managing an endowment the size of Dartmouth's?
PJ: The Investment Committee's charge is to deliver the best results, as defined by balancing high returns versus risk and volatility. Our job is to make sure we get our asset allocation model as close to right as possible.
Relative to our peers, we're fortunate in that early on we made an asset allocation decision where we're very heavily weighted toward illiquid, high-returning assets, such as venture capital, private equity, and real estate. In 2006, our returns were 19.6 percent, making us one of the top performing universities in the country.
At $3.5 billion, our endowment is larger than ever. But compared to our peers, we do more with less. Harvard's endowment is $29 billion; Yale's is $18 billion; and Stanford's is $15 billion.
[Part of the success of our performance comes from the strategic focus on asset allocation. Then the implementation is done by our very skilled and professional staff. We were fortunate enough two years ago to recruit David Russ as our new chief investment officer. He came from the University of California where he oversaw a $65 billion portfolio. He's someone several of us knew personally as a result of our professional interactions with him, and David is one of the most highly regarded chief investment officers in the country. He has delivered just a tremendous result in a short period of time.]
CW: What is the greatest challenge facing Dartmouth and its peer institutions?
PJ: Finding leadership at the very top of these elite institutions is going to be tough. We're extremely fortunate to have Jim Wright because he excels at two key skill sets that are diametrically opposed to one another and very difficult to find in one person. These institutions need leaders who are recognized as substantial scholars. But they are also large businesses requiring all the skill sets that CEOs of major global corporations have.
And I'll add a third skill set that even CEOs don't need, which is that our institutional leaders have to be tremendous fund raisers. It takes a particular individual to do that well. Jim Wright is very, very skilled at all three.
CW: Here's a question that was on my Dartmouth application: "Ask and answer your own question."
PJ: It took me months to answer that question! I don't have a question, but here's an answer: I'm very struck by how much progress Dartmouth has made since I was a student, while still adhering to its core values. In the mid-1970s, Dartmouth was much less diverse. Now it's remarkably so and has evolved to include and encourage diversity of all types.
And yet that patchwork of interests and individuals still treasures traditional, fundamental values: The environment is serious but doesn't necessarily take itself seriously. There's a sense of collegiality and community, an appreciation of history and tradition, and an interest in always going forward. The Trustees, the faculty, and the students all feel a tremendous sense of obligation to live up to the legacy they've been given.
[CW: Do you think your friends would have described you as a future Trustee?
PJ: It's hard to say when you're 20 years old. I'd say no, because I'm a little bit out of the box. I wasn't the person that people would look to and say she'll grow up to be president of the United States. Although I think people viewed me as a leader, I'm an unconventional profile in that way as well.]
[CW: If there was an alumnus on the wall at a Board of Trustees meeting, what would he or she see?
PJ: An alumnus on the wall would not be at all surprised by the way this Board works. It's by size and composition a fairly collegial environment, but people aren't afraid to ask tough and probing questions. They check their egos at the door. By and large, it's a roll-up-your-sleeves environment.
What are the things people are concerned about? They're consistently focused on making certain that Dartmouth is able in the short and the long term to deliver the highest caliber undergraduate experience, period. We debate what the components of that are, but no one is confused about that issue, and that is not something that's subject to debate.
The other area of focus is that we want to make sure that we have the requisite resources to deliver that caliber of education, so people are focused on attracting and retaining leading faculty who are great scholars and great teachers. That's something that's "baked into" the traditions of the institution and this Board doesn't debate the efficacy of that focus.
The area that I personally spend a fair amount of time on now is making sure we have the financial resources to put in place and implement our key priorities. So there's detailed discussion of finance and budget issues, and we have separate meetings for the Investment Committee, but they're regular and detailed and vigorous.
No one would be surprised, but I think people would be surprised perhaps by the diligence of each of the individual Board members in tackling key issues. And they might be surprised, at least at the 35,000 foot level, at how much consensus there is on the key priorities.]
[CW: What would you describe as the most significant achievement of the Board since you joined in 2001?
PJ: I actually think there have been several. I'll name a couple, not in priority order. The planning of this was in place before I joined the Board, but just being able to execute the multitude of construction projects that you see around campus will have impact for Dartmouth for at least a century. There was pent up demand, especially for new dormitory space and this Board moved that ball forward significantly. There was a need—and there continues to be a need—for new facilities in new academic disciplines, not because we've grown the size of the student body, but the nature of being able to educate that student body has changed the profile of space required to be effective. This Board has focused on adding those academic spaces.
I would also say that the College is in better financial shape, perhaps than at any moment in its history. There's no individual decision or Trustee that's contributed to that, but this Board has been very focused on the fiscal well-being of the institution and has been successful in ensuring both short term and long term financial health.]
[CW: What do you enjoy most about coming back to Hanover as a Trustee?
PJ: There are a couple of things we do that I just really, really enjoy. We get to meet with lots of faculty. For example, we have a dinner with recently tenured faculty. I am always just awestruck by what Dartmouth faculty members are doing from a research and scholarly point of view, and I'm comforted by how enthusiastically this very skilled group interacts with students as teachers. They're really gems, and it's amazing that they can do all the work they do, all the research they do, and still have hands-on interaction with students, like the kind of experience we had when we were Dartmouth students. I love that.
The other thing I enjoy is interacting with the students themselves. They are marvelous, bright, motivated people. For example, I was at Harvard getting an award at the business school, and there were eight or nine Dartmouth students interested in business attending this particular conference. They were just an inspiration to me. They're skilled, they're motivated, and I have every confidence they'll do what we as Trustees, what we as alumni, hope the people who come behind us do, which is turn out to be terrific leaders in their fields in the future.]
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