Last autumn, as the financial markets were going into free fall, University of Michigan CIO Erik Lundberg received a gift from one of the school endowment fund’s British asset managers. It was a reproduction of a poster created during World War II to help the British people maintain their famously stiff upper lips should the German army invade England. “Stay calm and carry on,” the poster reads. Lundberg immediately taped it to his office door.
“When things were falling apart, people were very concerned,” recalls Lundberg. “They wanted to know what was going on, what would happen to the endowment and to their jobs.”
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