Achieving Investment Excellence

Foreword

As CEO of one of the largest U.S. pension plans, I have become a humble admirer of board members who take on the weighty responsibility of governing the pension investments on behalf of current and future beneficiaries.

Board members face an onslaught of challenges when they land a trustee role: They often are highly trained professionals, but often in fields unrelated or distantly related to investment management. They are faced with complex and often technical investment decisions, and they have to quickly come up to speed while evaluating vast amounts of data or converging viewpoints.

To support and assist board members facing such challenges, my most trustworthy solutions have been education, structured dialogue and adequate time for meaningful debate. My board and staff invest a significant amount of time together in study and discussion to ensure we're on the same shared journey towards a good long-term pension outcome for our fund and its beneficiaries; the emphasis here is long term.

As a pension fund with fiduciary obligations that span generations of public workers, we have very long-term obligations. We are necessarily interested in building an investment solution that will generate solid, risk-adjusted returns over time. Our board members must arm themselves with fortitude and enough resiliency to maintain proper perspective amid an overwhelming array of short-term distractions. Decision makers at pension funds must frequently cope with a low return environment, ...