High private-equity fees also pose an obstacle for smaller U.S. endowments that don’t have the negotiating power of their larger peers, said Geeta Kapadia, chief investment officer at Fordham University in New York. The school’s endowment manages about $1 billion. She said Fordham often turns to smaller, more flexible fund sponsors.

“We really want to try and make sure that the fees are appropriate for what we’re doing,” Kapadia said. “That’s really why we end up partnering with smaller [private-equity] shops because they’re more willing to have that conversation.”

She said investors should unite to demand more transparency and alignment from private-capital fund managers regarding the fees they charge.

“It’s a very visceral and very personal thing,” she added. “Every dollar that I spend on fees is a dollar that I’m not giving to a student [through]scholarships.”

While Kapadia noted that Fordham isn’t the only higher education institution that allows its students to invest in the university’s endowment, she said she wants her university’s students to “put their money where their mouth is.”

For the Fordham University Student Managed Investment Fund, the endowment “just approved $1 million for students to run an environmental, social and governance fund. We hope they will take climate into consideration — I would be surprised if they didn’t — as they start to deploy assets in that fund,” Kapadia added.

I am delighted to announce that the University’s new chief investment officer will be Geeta Kapadia, CFA, an investment professional with 25 years of diverse experience and a demonstrated commitment to service and excellence in her profession. She will begin in the position on Monday, August 22.

A key member of the University’s executive leadership team, the chief investment officer devises the University’s investment strategy in collaboration with the Board of Trustees Finance and Investment Committee and Fordham’s senior leaders in the finance area. Kapadia joins the University at an exciting moment, with our endowment hovering close to $1 billion, and she is eminently qualified to manage it for strong returns and continued growth.

Since 2009, Kapadia has been associate treasurer for investments with the nonprofit Yale New Haven Health System, the largest health care system in Connecticut, where she led a five-person team overseeing an academic medical center’s $5.7 billion in assets and oversaw the system’s $3.8 billion in defined contribution retirement assets. From 2005 to 2008, she was a senior investment consultant with Mercer Investment Consulting, based in the United Kingdom, and in 2004 she served as investment analyst and director of marketing for Capital Metrics and Risk Solutions in Pune, India. She has appeared on lists of standout investment professionals several times, most recently in 2019, when the news platform Trusted Insight named her one of its top 30 health care chief investment officers.

Kapadia earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in financial markets and trading from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and an investment management certificate from the U.K. Society of Investment Professionals. She is an outstanding leader in her profession, who gives back to that profession and serves her community. Among many other volunteer pursuits, Kapadia is a longtime member of the CFA Institute, having served on its disciplinary review committee and mentored and advised other investment professionals throughout their candidacy for the Chartered Financial Analyst exam. She has also worked to bring greater diversity to the field of investment management, and received the Yale New Haven Health System’s Diversity and Inclusion ‘All In’ Award for 2019.

Kapadia is married to Shreeyash Palshikar, Ph.D., a scholar of South Asian studies, who recently returned from a senior Fulbright fellowship in India. The couple have two children, Anand, age 12, and Zara, age 9.

I am grateful to my Fordham colleagues Nicholas Milowski and Kamal Joshi, and to David Barrett and Meg Morris of David Barrett Partners for so ably assisting in this important search.

In addition, Fordham Trustees Don Almeida, Manny Chirico, Carolyn Albstein, Rick Calero, Sly McClearn, Tom Ennis, and Dario Werthein lent their time, guidance, and expertise to this effort, and I thank them.

We are thrilled to welcome Geeta Kapadia to Fordham. She will join me and the rest of the Finance team on the fifth floor of Faculty Memorial Hall on the Rose Hill campus and after August 22nd may be reached at [email protected].

Sincerely,
Martha K. Hirst
Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer