The Wallace Foundation Names Thomas P. Lenehan as Chief Investment Officer
NEW YORK, Nov. 2, 2020 – Thomas P. Lenehan, an award-winning investment manager with deep experience in the non-profit and financial sectors, has been named Chief Investment Officer at The Wallace Foundation, an independent, national philanthropy, effective Jan. 4, 2021, the foundation announced today. Lenehan will succeed Rob D. Nagel, who will retire at the beginning of next year.
As Chief Investment Officer, Lenehan will lead Wallace’s investment strategy and manager selection for its endowment which stands at $1.63 billion as of Sept. 30, and will work with the Investment Committee of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.
“Tom is a superb, forward-thinking strategist, sensitive to changing external conditions, and a strong believer in the interdisciplinary thinking that is the hallmark of Wallace’s approach,” said Will Miller, President of Wallace. “In these turbulent times, he will help us generate the income we need to continue our mission of advancing equity and improvements in learning and enrichment for young people and in the non-profit arts for everyone.”
Lenehan will remain in his current position as Deputy Chief Investment Officer at The Rockefeller University, one of the world’s leading biomedical research institutions, through the end of 2020. At Rockefeller, which he joined in 2011, Lenehan contributed to investment strategy and policy, asset allocation, portfolio construction, reporting, risk management, cash planning, liquidity and manager selection for the institution’s $2.4 billion endowment, including managing equities, fixed income, marketable alternatives, private equity, venture capital and real assets on a global basis.
“While I am truly sad to be moving on from The Rockefeller University, I am thrilled to be joining the team at The Wallace Foundation to support its important mission,” said Lenehan. “I look forward to implementing many of the valuable lessons I learned over my 9 years at Rockefeller in my new role at Wallace.”
“All of us at Rockefeller are grateful to Tom for his superior partnership in the success of our Investment Office over the past decade and delighted that he will bring his strong investment acumen and team building skills to another important institution and mission,” said Amy Falls, Chief Investment Officer at Rockefeller.
Prior to serving at Rockefeller, Lenehan held leadership positions at Commonfund Capital in Wilton, CT, initially as an Associate Director in 2005-2006 and as Director from 2006- 2011, helping manage $12.1 billion in private equity, venture capital and natural resources commitments globally on behalf of various institutional non-profit clients.
Before that, he was a Vice President at Vista Equity Partners in San Francisco from 2001-2005; a Principal at Financial Technology Ventures in San Francisco, and a Senior Associate at MMC Capital in Greenwich, CT. He was also a Summer Associate at McKinsey & Co., and began his career as a Financial Analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., from 1992-1995.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Lenehan received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a B.S. from Georgetown University majoring in finance and international management, graduating summa cum laude and valedictorian of his class. He financed his college education through scholarships, work-study and outside employment. Lenehan was selected for inclusion in the Top 30 University Endowment Chief Investment Officers by Trusted Insight in both 2019 and 2020. He has appeared as a guest on the Capital Allocators podcast, and on Privcap.
Lenehan will succeed Rob D. Nagel, Wallace’s Chief Investment Officer who has managed the Foundation’s investment portfolio since its inception in 1988, and provided a strong foundation for his successor. Under Nagel’s leadership, and in collaboration with the foundation’s Investment Committee and the staff that he recruited and trained, the Foundation developed a fully diversified portfolio that ranked in the top quartile of the Cambridge Associates Foundation Universe over the trailing 1, 3 and 5-year periods ending June 30, 2020 , and has paid out over $2 billion in grants during his tenure. Nagel was honored when Wallace received the Industry Innovation award for foundations from Chief Investment Officer magazine in 2010 for its focus on return generation balanced with risk controls.
###
Based in New York City, The Wallace Foundation is an independent national philanthropy that seeks to foster equity and improvements in learning and enrichment for young people and in the arts for everyone. Its current areas of interest include school leadership, expanding and diversifying audiences for the arts, social and emotional learning, summer learning, arts education, and afterschool. Wallace aims to help solve problems facing the fields in which it works, benefiting both the organizations it works with directly and the broader field by developing credible, useful knowledge to inform policy and practice nationwide. The Foundation maintains a free, online Knowledge Center at www.wallacefoundation.org.