David Swensen

David Swensen managed Yale's endowment from 1985 until his death in 2021, growing it from $1 billion to $42 billion. He pioneered the "Yale Model" of endowment investing — dramatically reducing allocations to publicly traded stocks and bonds in favor of private equity, venture capital, real estate, and hedge funds. This approach, documented in "Pioneering Portfolio Management", generated exceptional long-term returns and was adopted by endowments globally. Swensen also taught at Yale and mentored a generation of institutional investment managers who now run major endowments and foundations. His insistence on investing with only the best managers in each asset class — and his willingness to pay performance fees for genuine alpha — fundamentally changed how large institutions think about alternative investments. His legacy continues through the dozens of CIOs he trained who now oversee hundreds of billions in endowment assets globally.