Dear Members of the Yale Community,
I write with profound sadness to share the news that David Swensen, Yale’s chief investment officer, died yesterday evening after a long and courageous battle with cancer. David served our university with distinction. He was an exceptional colleague, a dear friend, and a beloved mentor to many in our community. Future generations will benefit from his dedication, brilliance, and generosity.
After receiving his Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1980, David worked for Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers before returning to Yale in 1985 to lead our investments office. With his guidance, Yale’s endowment yielded returns that established him as a legend among institutional investors. Over the years, he lectured in Yale College and the School of Management. On Monday, he and long-time friend and colleague Dean Takahashi taught the last class of the term for Investment Analysis, a seminar they co-instructed for thirty-five years. David was an incorpo
David Swensen, Yale s renowned investments head, dies at 67
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In 2019, Yale University men’s basketball head coach James Jones, left, is presented with the game ball by David Swensen, chief investment officer for the Yale University Endowment, in the locker room after his 300th career win over Brown at Lee Amphitheater in New Haven.Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut MediaShow MoreShow Less
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Yale University Chief Investment Officer David Swensen, left, shakes hands with Yale University President Peter Salovey, center, during Yale University’s 318th Commencement in 2019 in New Haven.Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut MediaShow MoreShow Less
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NEW HAVEN David Swensen, whose investment strategies brought Yale University’s endowment to a record $31 billion, has died.
Yale endowment chief David Swensen dies at 67
By Janet Lorin Bloomberg,Updated May 6, 2021, 1:02 p.m.
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David Swensen, chief investment officer of the Yale University Investments Office, speaks at the John C. Bogle Legacy Forum in New York.Peter Foley/Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomb
(Bloomberg) David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale University who helped revolutionize how college endowments are managed, has died. He was 67.
Swensen died May 5 after a long battle with cancer, Yale said Thursday in a statement. He had gone on temporary leave from his job in September 2012 to undergo treatment before returning to his duties at Yale.
David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing, Dies at 67
At Yale, a colleague said, he showed “there was a way to compete hard and well in financial markets, but to have our lives be about something that mattered more.”
The money manager David Swensen, who oversaw Yale University’s endowment, in an undated photo. His investment strategy became known as the “Yale model” and was imitated by other colleges and universities.Credit.Driely Schwartz Vieira for The New York Times
Published May 6, 2021Updated May 7, 2021
David Swensen, a money manager who gave up a lucrative Wall Street career to oversee Yale University’s endowment and proceeded to revolutionize endowment investing, in the process making Yale’s the best-performing fund in the country over a 20-year period, died on Wednesday in New Haven, Conn. He was 67.
Photograph by Harvard Public Affairs and Communications
The spring of 1933 was a trying time: the depths of the Depression, a new president scrambling to reverse systemic disasters and lift shattered spirits. Sound familiar?
During that Commencement week, the Phi Beta Kappa Orator was Connecticut governor Wilbur Cross he of the eponymous parkway, and a thorough Yalie. In
Connecticut Yankee, his autobiography, he called the invitation the “most signal honor in my literary career.” Taking as his cue Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous “American Scholar” address, Cross told his audience “that 1837 and 1933 were alike in that they were both years of ‘economic confusion and public upheaval,’ and yet Emerson had no word about hard times, which must have been in the minds of all his hearers. ‘Looking beyond turmoil and distress, he did not let his gaze wander, for more than a moment, from the ultimate triumph of the human spirit over material things.’”