Dream Team
by Jennifer Waters
Related Stories: Bucking the Norm
Diversity + Intellectual Power + Relationships = Results
Kim Lew is leading a dream team that follows the investment strategy of Carnegie Corporation of New York: Buck the norm.
The endowment and foundation world is not known for its diversity, but Lew takes the contrarian route there, too. Lew and her team pride themselves on their assorted social and professional backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations, recognizing that each person’s upbringing and life circumstances allow for distinctive voices and angles when it comes to investment decision-making.
“We have a unified philosophy in how we invest, but from an intellectual diversity standpoint, we are encouraged to view the world a little bit differently.”
— Brooke Jones, Investment Director, Carnegie Corporation of New York
“She has cultivated an environment, through hiring and active management, that encourages us all to think differently,” says Brooke Jones, one of three investment directors in Lew’s camp. Jones’s background starts in economic development and financial services consulting in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, leading to her primary role as a director of investments in emerging markets. “We have a unified philosophy in how we invest, but from an intellectual diversity standpoint, we are encouraged to view the world a little bit differently. She does that to avoid groupthink — we don’t always agree with each other.”
Indeed, the team operates as a nonhierarchical think tank in an environment that demands deep dives into due diligence and that all-important people quotient. No stone is left unturned. Directors and analysts research, dissect, challenge, and interpret every nuance of each and every deal and the management behind it.
“The goal is to be sure that the risks are unearthed,” Lew says. “You can’t mitigate the risk if you can’t identify the risk. And if risk is not identified, it is everyone’s fault because everyone is charged with unearthing risk.”
“All people can’t be right at the same time. There is a penalty for not raising a risk factor.”
— Kim J. Lew, Vice President and CIO, Carnegie Corporation of New York
She goes beyond that premise to ensure that there are no dire consequences should things go wrong. “All people can’t be right at the same time,” she says. “There is a penalty for not raising a risk factor.”
As starkly different as their early lives and professional careers were, the team’s academic backgrounds are remarkably similar. The eight-member team may be small, but they make up for it with what Jon-Michael Consalvo, an associate director, calls “a bit of intimidating intellectual firepower.” Most have their MBAs and other advanced degrees from the likes of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and Yale University. One is a lawyer, another is an anthropologist, and yet another was once a budding actress.
“Optically, we look similar, but the way we got to those schools is really different,” says Ken Lee, who has more of a traditional investment and hedge fund of funds work history. He is the go-to for both developed markets and venture capital and growth equity activity in private markets.
Lee, for example, the son of a Chinese immigrant mother he affectionately calls a “classic tiger mom,” is a graduate of a San Francisco public magnet school he describes as life altering. “We have a really different gender balance compared to a lot of groups, also social backgrounds and sexual orientation. And that’s good because if everyone comes from the same thought process, it becomes an echo chamber.”
“Most of these team members are not just intellectually powerful in understanding the math or the finance, or how to build models or underwrite a company. They understand the human factor around things like team building and what things go into building a great firm, which is oftentimes more important in the work we do than having the analytical abilities.”
— Jon-Michael Consalvo, Associate Director of Investments, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Lew, herself, is the product of a Chinese immigrant father and an African-American mother who met in Harlem and were both 17 years old when she was born. She grew up in the Bronx, attended the Bronx High School of Science, and went on to Wharton for her undergraduate degree and Harvard for her MBA.
Prior to joining Carnegie Corporation, Lew worked in private placement and middle market banking before moving over to the Ford Foundation. She rose through the ranks of the Ford Foundation to senior manager of private equity where, among other responsibilities, she explored new areas of alternative investing while managing investments in venture capital and buyout funds. She has fused her experiences, both professional and personal, into investment and management strategies that embrace idiosyncratic risks, diversification, and earnings potential.
But she also tosses in a measure of benevolence that permeates every level of her management style and mentoring — from how she chooses the people she hires, to how she oversees the office and staff, to how the team approaches deals and investments.
“You don’t love your brothers and sisters every day. Sometimes they annoy or aggravate you. But there is a sense of having a little bit of responsibility for each other in some way.”
— Kim J. Lew, Vice President and CIO, Carnegie Corporation of New York
“Most of these team members are not just intellectually powerful in understanding the math or the finance, or how to build models or underwrite a company,” says Consalvo, a New Jersey native who joined the Corporation straight out of New York University’s Stern School of Business before earning a Wharton MBA. He is primarily responsible for the buyout portfolio and helps to oversee the portfolio management side of things. “They understand the human factor around things like team building and what things go into building a great firm, which is oftentimes more important in the work we do than having the analytical abilities.”
Lew concedes that being a woman boss and a mother may be part of the secret sauce. Her team is an extension of her family, and she wants team members to think of themselves as a family, which they largely do. “You don’t love your brothers and sisters every day,” she says. “Sometimes they annoy or aggravate you. But there is a sense of having a little bit of responsibility for each other in some way.” At the same time, she recognizes that her own success is directly tied to the triumphs of each of her team members.
“She is all about elevating her team,” says Alisa Mall, an investment director who manages the corporation’s real estate and natural resources portfolio. “She is invested in each of us significantly — in terms of time and guidance — which is a wonderful quality for a boss.” Mall, an attorney, is a West Coast native, whose father is a diagnostic radiology doctor and whose mother is a development professional and vice-president of the San Francisco Public Library Commission.
“The team is greater than the sum of its people, and that’s what makes it so special.”
— Gabrielle Porter, Almanac Realty Investors (formerly of Carnegie Corporation of New York)
The junior investment analysts are Iris Lee and Jacqueline Guttman. Lee, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, studied in Morocco and spent summers teaching English in Taiwan. She is the anthropologist and a Brandeis University graduate. Guttman, a Barnard College graduate, was born and raised in Houston, the daughter of a Midwest-raised father and an Israeli-born mother who grew up in the U.S. The newest member of the team is Michael Burns, a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, who came on board in October as its operations manager. He’s got a degree in finance and nearly 10 years in investment operations, including seven at Vanderbilt University’s Office of Investments.
Gabrielle Porter, the former actress, might also be considered the first graduate of “Carnegie University.” She joined Carnegie as a temporary administrative assistant in 2015 and worked in admin for about a year before being promoted to operations associate. She recently left the Corporation to join the investor relations team at Almanac Realty Investors, a move that could be considered a testament to the mentoring the team employs, internally and externally. “They were all such great natural mentors in creating an opportunity for me and helping me transition from acting, which I loved, to this investing world,” Porter says. “The team is greater than the sum of its people, and that’s what makes it so special.”
Andrew Carnegie isn’t around to witness this, or course. “No man can become rich,” he once said, “without himself enriching others.” The remark may in fact be apocryphal — but in spirit, it is pure Carnegie.
Jennifer Waters is an award-winning writer who has primarily covered business news for major national newspapers and magazines, radio and TV broadcasts, and online. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many other domestic and international news publications. She has hosted, cohosted, and produced TV and radio shows on business and general-interest topics for a variety of national broadcast stations, and has been nominated for a James Beard Award in journalism.
