Senior Decision Makers: Nicholas Csicsko, Trinity Wall Street (EP.508)

2020 was this manager's worst year. He was down an additional 30%. We thought 2019 was the worst year, but it turns out 2020 was the worst year so far. That led to a real moment of soul searching. You have a drawdown that's starting to get close to 50% at the trough. Over the course of that year, I went back and spent a lot of time with that manager. I think I met with them at least seven or eight times. And this manager works out at Dallas, He's very responsive, but really is best to meet in person. No IRBD function, nothing like that. And it was COVID. It just happened to be that this manage

I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. The CIOs of the largest pools of capital have jobs that require broad skill sets. They cover the world across asset classes and strategies, determine portfolio construction, and decide what goes into their portfolio. They're also leaders, managing people in an investment office, working with a board, and taking care of all their stakeholders, whether students, grantees, pensioners, family members, insured recipients, or sovereign states. It's a complex role that involves far more than just investing. But they don't do it alone. Behind every succe

Our first guest on the senior decision makers miniseries is Nick Sisco. Nick is a managing director at the Trinity Wall Street Endowment, where he joined CIO Meredith Jenkins at the founding of the investment office in 2016 and has spent the last decade helping build a young endowment inside a 320 year old institution. Today, the endowment has grown to over $6,000,000,000. Nick's path into investing is a fascinating one. He studied composition and earned his doctorate of music at Juilliard. While there, he talked his way into an internship at Juilliard's endowment and never looked back. Our co

the bear has dropped its final season on Hulu and Disney plus. If you're a fan of the show, you might already know that Will Gadera, author of the bestseller unreasonable hospitality and wildly popular recent guest on the show is a consultant to the bear. That's not a coincidence. The bear is fundamentally about what happens when someone who's learned from the best tries to become the best. It's a theme you often hear from guests on the show, translating what they know to the practice of investing and imparting that wisdom to you. So if you know someone who loves the bear and hasn't found capi

Please enjoy this first conversation of our senior decision maker series with Nick Sisco. Thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me.

It is very customary of a capital allocators interview to start with your background. I'm especially excited to dive into this subject with you because it's rare that someone finds their way into the investment industry from music. Why don't you share how you got into this industry in the first place?

Music brought me to New York to study at the Juilliard School. During my master's, I was studying composition, trying to make ends meet, working a lot of jobs. And then all of a sudden, I stayed and joined the doctoral program at Juilliard, and it was free. And the doctoral program came with a stipend. I didn't know what to do with that stipend because I was working and paying rent and doing the things people do. I put it in a brokerage account and started buying stocks. It was a whole experience. It was 2007. I felt smart for a little bit, then 2008 happened and I felt the opposite. But it wa

What was it about investing in stocks in 2007 that prompted you to say, I wanna pivot my career interests to investing as opposed to music?