Capital Allocators · Monday, July 27, 2026
Michelle Knudsen, CIO of the NYU endowment (valued at $8 billion), discussed her approach to portfolio management, which involves balancing traditional asset allocation with a total portfolio perspective. She emphasized the importance of preparing for "bad case scenarios" and having a plan to manage through them, a lesson learned from starting her career at Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis.
“The biggest thing is you always have to be prepared for the bad case scenario. You don't have to like the bad case scenario, you do have to think about what it could look like and have at least the outline of a plan for what you'll do in that situation.”
“Making decisions on the fly when the information around you is changing quickly is hard.”
“I don't think anything has shaped how I think about portfolio management or how I manage stakeholders or how I manage my career quite like starting out in the middle of a financial crisis.”