[REPLAY] Collette Chilton – Humility and Loyalty at Williams College (EP.174)

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Thank you for asking me.

You've been at this in the seat for a long time, and, I mean, I guess it makes sense to go back and ask how you first got interested in investing.

It was purely out of necessity. I was working in investment banking. I was nine months and two weeks pregnant with my second daughter, and this was during the banking crisis in 1993, and the bank eliminated the group I was in. And I was the first person they walked into HR, because I literally was almost ten months pregnant, and I needed to have a job. We needed both of us to be working. And so I went around and looked for a job before my daughter was born, and then as soon as possible after my daughter was born. And a guy who I had done some transactions with, a lawyer, was the general counse

You spent that time in the State Pension fund, and then you spent a long time in corporate pension fund at Lucent. What are the key lessons and differences you saw in those types of pools of capital?

Well, some of it's all the same, right, across the three different public corporate pension funds and endowment. You know, we're looking for good managers and trying to find them. And the difference is that those pools of capital, you have liabilities, and you have retirees that you are supporting. Whereas at Williams, we support over 50% of the operating budget, so it's incredibly important. But there, there are people I knew who retired and were relying on what we did every day. And that was amazing. You really felt the importance of what you did. And the other difference at the state pensio

So if you go back to that time, what was the most outlandish thing you were offered?

So the pension funds up here are terribly underfunded and mismanaged. Each city and town has its own pension fund, and so the state one started doing well. And so then the towns could invest with the state, so there was actually a client facing part of it. And the guy who did the client stuff was offered a car by a manager, and he said that it was okay to take it because they had the name of the firm on the side of the car. So it wasn't actually that they were giving him a car. It was like they were giving him a pen or some other kind of swag because it had their name on it. So it was it was a

Which firm was it that branded cars?