For three years Larry Kochard led a double life. By day the former director of equity and hedge fund investments for the Virginia Retirement System helped allocate the giant pension fund’s $40 billion in assets. By night he taught undergraduate investing classes as an adjunct professor of finance at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. Now the 48-year-old economist and former Goldman Sachs investment banker has found a new home where he’ll be able to combine both of his passions.
Last month Kochard became Georgetown University’s first-ever chief investment officer. Job one is revamping the allocation model for Georgetown’s $800 million in endowment, pension and operating funds, which had been managed by a committee with the help of an outside consultant. Kochard expects any changes to be more evolutionary than revolutionary. “You want everyone to be comfortable,” he says. “If there are things that need to be acted on quickly, you do, but if you’re making major changes, you need to go about them in a prudent way.”
Kochard is just as excited about his other new job at the Washington, D.C., school: Come spring, he’ll be teaching a class on investing. Before joining the Virginia Retirement System, he was a full-time faculty member at UVA, where he earned both a master’s and a Ph.D. in economics. (He also has an MBA from the University of Rochester.) He plans to link his two Georgetown roles by developing an undergraduate internship program for the nascent investment office, which is in the process of hiring staff. “Students are a great source of cheap labor,” he jokes. “Hopefully, they’ll learn something, and I’ll get some value-added out of ‘em.”
