Harvard Management Company Elects Two New Board Members

Harvard Management Company has elected two new members to the board of directors responsible for overseeing the investment of the University’s $35.9 billion endowment.

Jeremy C. Stein, a Harvard economics professor and former Federal Reserve board governor, and Joshua S. Friedman ’76, a co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Canyon Partners hedge fund, joined the nine-member HMC board in July.

This year marked a significant changing of the guard at the Management Company during a time when it has been trying to right its lackluster post-recession investment returns record. Harvard statistics professor Stephen Blyth took over as CEO in January and has been tasked with returning HMC to the top of the pack.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Stein said. “I’m a finance person, so it’s inherently interesting to me to be involved with it.”

In another HMC transition, University treasurer and member of the Harvard Corporation Paul J. Finnegan ’75 has taken over as chair of the board. He filled the place of James F. Rothenberg ’68, a longtime Harvard donor and Corporation member who died unexpectedly in July.

“It is an exciting time at HMC,” Finnegan wrote in an email. “A time of new leadership and I look forward to working with and supporting Stephen and the team at HMC in successfully managing the university’s endowment.”

HMC also lost a board member, Robert S. Kaplan, who was recently elected to be president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, a post that required him to step down from the HMC board, which now has 11 members. Finnegan said HMC will likely elect one or two more members to the board—capped at 15 members—in the next six to 12 months.

The Management Company will hold its first quarterly meeting of the 2015-2016 academic year in September.

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.