The 30 years Lyn Hutton has spent investing to support the mission of foundations and endowments represent nothing short of a calling. But even as she learns she’s the recipient of Institutional Investor’s Investor Lifetime Achievement Award, she shuns any attention to her own considerable investment savvy, instead pointing to the influence of her mentors and colleagues. “You need to nurture talent, and you need to make sure you’re a good colleague,” says Hutton, CIO of the Wilton, Connecticut–based Commonfund.
Her philosophy is simple: “There are no gurus. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
After years of managing assets for single institutions such as Dartmouth College and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, she now oversees close to $25.5 billion on behalf of nearly 1,600 nonprofit institutions. Commonfund was founded in 1971 with a grant from the Ford Foundation, to help educational and other nonprofit institutions enhance their financial resources.
To move an organization forward, Hutton believes, finance and investment executives must guide and support one another: “The people I found to be the best colleagues, mentors and mentees are people who have an incredible passion for the craft.”
The native Angeleno got her start as vice president for administration and treasurer at the University of Southern California, where she graduated with honors from the USC School of Business Administration. There she was tapped to join the Commonfund board of trustees, later becoming its chair.
In 1990 she moved from sunny California to the woods of Hanover, New Hampshire, to become treasurer of Dartmouth College. There she launched a hedge fund portfolio, hiring Elizabeth Hilpman away from Commonfund to run it. In 1998, Hutton left to become CFO at the MacArthur Foundation.
Hutton believed she would finish her career at MacArthur, but in 2003 she was once again called by the mission, this time in the form of Commonfund. As CIO she oversees all aspects of investment strategy, portfolio management, due diligence and manager selection for all of the organization’s investment funds, as well as noninvestment programs and services.
“The pressures are great for performance and return across the board,” Hutton acknowledges. For now she will continue to keep the flock focused on their priorities — making the best investment decisions to continue their important missions.
