Harvard Alumnus Brian Rogers Named to Harvard Management Co. Board

The Harvard Management Company named Brian C. Rogers ’77, a prominent investment manager, to a position on its board of directors Monday.

Rogers’s appointment comes during a period of major reorganization at the firm. In January, HMC's newly-appointed chief executive N.P. Narvekar that he would lay off around half of the 230-person staff and move to outsource the bulk of HMC’s investments to external managers.

The changes mark a major strategy shift at the firm responsible for managing Harvard's $35.7 billion endowment, which has long used a unique "hybrid" investment model that kept the bulk of its assets invested by internal staff but also retained external firms.

Narvekar lauded Rogers’s experience in asset management in a press release and emphasized the role Rogers will play in the firm’s restructuring.

“It is an honor to welcome Brian to our Board,” Narvekar wrote in a statement. “I am confident Brian’s experience in asset management will be extremely valuable as we develop new investment and risk frameworks to support our new investment model.”

Rogers currently serves as chairman of the Baltimore-based investment management firm T. Rowe Price Group, a position which he has held since 2007. He holds degrees both from Harvard Business School and the College, where he lived in Mather House and concentrated in Economics.

“HMC has a long history of creating significant value for Harvard University and I am delighted to be able to contribute to the organization’s next phase of succes,” Rogers wrote in the press release.

Rogers currently sits on a number of boards, including the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Boards of Trustees and the investment committee for Vanderbilt University. He is the HMC board's 11th member.

HMC has struggled to keep pace with its peers in a market that has been difficult for large institutional investors. In fiscal year 2016, the firm posted its worst investment returns on its investments since the nadir of the financial crisis, and the endowment dropped nearly $2 billion in value. According to to University President Drew G. Faust, HMC's lackluster returns are expected to constrain University budgets for years to come.

—Staff writer Brandon J. Dixon can be reached at brandon.dixon@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrandonJoDixon.