Few jobs at Dartmouth require a person to travel regularly around the world to Singapore, India and England, but when you manage Dartmouth $3 billion endowment, well, you have to do what you have to do.
As Dartmouth’s Chief Investment Officer since Feb. 1, 2011, Pamela Peedin ’89, T ’98 feels the burden of managing Dartmouth’s large endowment but wouldn’t trade her position for anything in the world. In fact, Peedin considers her role as CIO to be her dream job.
“It’s weighty but energizing,” Peedin said. “However, I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.
Peedin credits her colleagues’ skills, passion and professionalism as why she enjoys work much more and finds it less stressful than she otherwise might.
“I am incredibly lucky to have a very talented group of colleagues in the Investment Office and advisors on the investment committee who are literally the world’s foremost investment experts,” Peedin said. “I couldn’t be in better company to help guide the endowment.
She loves pursuing an investment career with the mission of generating returns the place she has been a part of for 30 years.
“Being here is an extraordinary responsibility and privilege,” Peedin explained. “I think about it every day. Dartmouth does such an extraordinary job of educating leaders and life-long learners and I love that everything we do in the investment office has that mindset. It’s a wonderful place to be.
Peedin travels a considerable amount throughout the globe, although most of it occurs within the United States.
As a result, Peedin explains that she doesn’t have a typical workweek. Instead, she has four kinds of typical weeks, which can include traveling, seeing investors across the globe, preparing for Investment meetings, attending all the meetings of the Board of Trustees.
Most weeks are a combination of those activities. Her most typical weeks are prominently spent in the office, managing the office, having weekly internal staff meetings to discuss investments and seeing managers in and outside of the office.
According to Peedin, the Investment Office tries to consider as many what-if scenarios as possible when making investment decisions, stress-testing Dartmouth’s investment portfolio for those scenarios.
Understandably, many people, including numerous students at Dartmouth, facing such long, stressful hours would resort to coffee and caffeine to keep them awake and alert. By her own admission, Peedin does the same thing, explaining she is a triple grande dry cappuccino drinker at Starbucks.
Recently though, Peedin is trying to cut back on her caffeine intake, which she claims to be the hardest thing she’s every done. At the moment, including at our interview, Peedin drinks tea as an alternative to coffee to ensure she doesn’t have addictions in her life and can stay healthy.
Peedin and her husband Paul Rebuck, have two sons, Matt, 13, and Charlie, 11, and Peedin loves spending as much time as possible with her family.
“I love to spend time with my family, whether it’s long walks with my husband, helping my kids with homework or cheering them on in their sports games, or having a great conversation with the family around the dinner table, which we try to do at least a few nights a week – these are my biggest stress-relievers,” Peedin said.
Peedin’s family lives on the school campus where her husband works, and is able to participate in numerous campus activities including attending plays, concerts and sports events.
Peedin’s family loves to spend time outdoors, especially at the beach. Summer weekends are often spent kayaking, paddle-boarding and surfing, and the family is occasionally able to go on a vacation to a foreign country.
Peedin arrived at Dartmouth from Boston University, where she was BU’s first-ever CIO, BU’s Executive Director of Media Relations Colin Riley said.
Starting from scratch, Peedin completely revolutionized BU’s way of doing business, building BU’s Investment Office from the ground up. BU’s Board of Trustees investment committee used to meet monthly to manage BU’s holdings. Nowadays, thanks to Peedin’s efforts, the committee approves investments while day-to-day business is managed by the Investment Office.
“Transition to a college administration was interesting, especially since BU hadn’t had an investment office when I arrived,” Peedin said.
Working together with BU’s President, Peedin determined how best to initiate an internal effort at making investments and how to put that process into the governance structure that must work with the committee, senior administrators and BU’s Board of Trustees.
Peedin would need to learn the job under fire, however, as shortly following her appointment in May 2007, the financial market collapsed in what would be known as the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, Peedin’s main concern was making investors in BU understand that BU was capable of weathering the financial storm and understanding the different levers that needed to be employed.
While the stress was much higher then compared to now, Peedin still works at the same frenetic pace because of all the different initiatives Dartmouth is implementing.
BU averaged 5.8 percent on annual returns during Peedin’s five years running the Investment Office, which placed the university in the top quarter of college and universities. In 2010, the year Peedin left BU, the returns were 12.7 percent, outdoing Dartmouth’s 10 percent the same year.
Prior to BU, Peedin had been a consultant and managing director at Cambridge Associates for 10 years. Cambridge Associates is a Boston firm that advises nonprofits on their investments, and helped transition Peedin from education to finance. Peedin oversaw $2.5 billion of aggregate assets for numerous organizations, including universities, independent schools and foundations.
It was at Cambridge Associates where she saw the intersection of theory and practice in endowments.
Peedin studied psychology while an undergraduate at Dartmouth before working for Oldfields School in Maryland as a teacher and administrator and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts as a financial aid director.
While working for different schools, Peedin found herself increasingly involved in the business side of education and, knowing she loved finance and the intersection of finance and education, she pursued an MBA at Tuck. At first, she had the intention of running a school but found herself fascinated by the challenges of investing and mastering the stock market roller coaster, which ultimately helped her discover a love of investments she didn’t know about previously.
“Investing is one of the most fascinating intellectual challenges,” Peedin said. “I think it’s an extraordinary field. Coupled with the passion I’ve always had for education, it’s a great combination."
“It’s weighty but energizing,” Peedin said. “However, I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.
Peedin credits her colleagues’ skills, passion and professionalism as why she enjoys work much more and finds it less stressful than she otherwise might.
“I am incredibly lucky to have a very talented group of colleagues in the Investment Office and advisors on the investment committee who are literally the world’s foremost investment experts,” Peedin said. “I couldn’t be in better company to help guide the endowment.
She loves pursuing an investment career with the mission of generating returns the place she has been a part of for 30 years.
“Being here is an extraordinary responsibility and privilege,” Peedin explained. “I think about it every day. Dartmouth does such an extraordinary job of educating leaders and life-long learners and I love that everything we do in the investment office has that mindset. It’s a wonderful place to be.
Peedin travels a considerable amount throughout the globe, although most of it occurs within the United States.
As a result, Peedin explains that she doesn’t have a typical workweek. Instead, she has four kinds of typical weeks, which can include traveling, seeing investors across the globe, preparing for Investment meetings, attending all the meetings of the Board of Trustees.
Most weeks are a combination of those activities. Her most typical weeks are prominently spent in the office, managing the office, having weekly internal staff meetings to discuss investments and seeing managers in and outside of the office.
According to Peedin, the Investment Office tries to consider as many what-if scenarios as possible when making investment decisions, stress-testing Dartmouth’s investment portfolio for those scenarios.
Understandably, many people, including numerous students at Dartmouth, facing such long, stressful hours would resort to coffee and caffeine to keep them awake and alert. By her own admission, Peedin does the same thing, explaining she is a triple grande dry cappuccino drinker at Starbucks.
Recently though, Peedin is trying to cut back on her caffeine intake, which she claims to be the hardest thing she’s every done. At the moment, including at our interview, Peedin drinks tea as an alternative to coffee to ensure she doesn’t have addictions in her life and can stay healthy.
Peedin and her husband Paul Rebuck, have two sons, Matt, 13, and Charlie, 11, and Peedin loves spending as much time as possible with her family.
“I love to spend time with my family, whether it’s long walks with my husband, helping my kids with homework or cheering them on in their sports games, or having a great conversation with the family around the dinner table, which we try to do at least a few nights a week – these are my biggest stress-relievers,” Peedin said.
Peedin’s family lives on the school campus where her husband works, and is able to participate in numerous campus activities including attending plays, concerts and sports events.
Peedin’s family loves to spend time outdoors, especially at the beach. Summer weekends are often spent kayaking, paddle-boarding and surfing, and the family is occasionally able to go on a vacation to a foreign country.
Peedin arrived at Dartmouth from Boston University, where she was BU’s first-ever CIO, BU’s Executive Director of Media Relations Colin Riley said.
Starting from scratch, Peedin completely revolutionized BU’s way of doing business, building BU’s Investment Office from the ground up. BU’s Board of Trustees investment committee used to meet monthly to manage BU’s holdings. Nowadays, thanks to Peedin’s efforts, the committee approves investments while day-to-day business is managed by the Investment Office.
“Transition to a college administration was interesting, especially since BU hadn’t had an investment office when I arrived,” Peedin said.
Working together with BU’s President, Peedin determined how best to initiate an internal effort at making investments and how to put that process into the governance structure that must work with the committee, senior administrators and BU’s Board of Trustees.
Peedin would need to learn the job under fire, however, as shortly following her appointment in May 2007, the financial market collapsed in what would be known as the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, Peedin’s main concern was making investors in BU understand that BU was capable of weathering the financial storm and understanding the different levers that needed to be employed.
While the stress was much higher then compared to now, Peedin still works at the same frenetic pace because of all the different initiatives Dartmouth is implementing.
BU averaged 5.8 percent on annual returns during Peedin’s five years running the Investment Office, which placed the university in the top quarter of college and universities. In 2010, the year Peedin left BU, the returns were 12.7 percent, outdoing Dartmouth’s 10 percent the same year.
Prior to BU, Peedin had been a consultant and managing director at Cambridge Associates for 10 years. Cambridge Associates is a Boston firm that advises nonprofits on their investments, and helped transition Peedin from education to finance. Peedin oversaw $2.5 billion of aggregate assets for numerous organizations, including universities, independent schools and foundations.
It was at Cambridge Associates where she saw the intersection of theory and practice in endowments.
Peedin studied psychology while an undergraduate at Dartmouth before working for Oldfields School in Maryland as a teacher and administrator and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts as a financial aid director.
While working for different schools, Peedin found herself increasingly involved in the business side of education and, knowing she loved finance and the intersection of finance and education, she pursued an MBA at Tuck. At first, she had the intention of running a school but found herself fascinated by the challenges of investing and mastering the stock market roller coaster, which ultimately helped her discover a love of investments she didn’t know about previously.
“Investing is one of the most fascinating intellectual challenges,” Peedin said. “I think it’s an extraordinary field. Coupled with the passion I’ve always had for education, it’s a great combination."
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