Capital Allocators · Monday, July 27, 2026
Michelle Knudsen, leading the NYU endowment's transformation, is focused on building a best-in-class endowment. She highlighted that the endowment's portfolio is approximately $8 billion and has undergone significant changes over the past two years, including incorporating quant and macro strategies, venture capital, and emerging managers. Knudsen also noted the importance of building relationships with both current and next-generation managers.
“At the core of our asset allocation, we've tried to hone in on what are the different types of assets and the different roles that we want our assets to play in the portfolio.”
“We've moved away from this homogeneous bottom-up fundamental approach to mixing in some quant exposure, some macro on the hedge fund side or RV strategies. We've brought in venture capital. We've brought in emerging managers.”
“In the two years that I've been at NYU, we've backed a fund one, a new launch hedge fund, couple fund twos. Started looking at how do we build relationships with not just the current generation of great managers, but also the next generation of great managers.”