Stanford, Brandeis Endowment Vets Join Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins is building out its investment team, which runs more than $6 billion for the Baltimore university and hospital.

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore (Bigstock/Jia Wang Kun)

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore

(Bigstock/Jia Wang Kun)

Johns Hopkins University’s office of investments has hired Joanna Pratt, the former investment team director for Stanford University’s endowment, and Christopher Lenox, the former director of investments at Brandeis University, for new positions.

Lenox started earlier this month as managing director of investments, according to a release. Pratt is to begin her new job as managing director for markets and risk April 23.

“Both Chris and Joanna are purpose-driven team players who want to make a difference for this institution,” said chief investment officer Jason Perlioni, in a statement. “They will help me to advance and lead our investment organization at Johns Hopkins.” The office of investments manages $6 billion in assets for the endowment and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Perlioni joined Hopkins in February 2017 from Pritzker Group Asset Management, where he was also CIO.

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According to Perlioni, Lenox will be responsible for selecting and monitoring outside investment managers and opportunistic investments. At Brandeis, which Lenox joined in 2012, he oversaw most of the endowment’s public market investments and a portion of private assets. Before that, he was an investment officer at Princeton University’s endowment, and spent time with Millgate Capital and the Goldman Sachs Group.

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Pratt, who joined Stanford in 2015, will develop and implement a risk and portfolio management framework for all of Johns Hopkins’ portfolios, which include one main multibillion dollar endowment fund and hundreds of smaller pools. During her years at Stanford, she headed risk management, capital markets, and fixed income and liquidity. Before that, Pratt led Nerdwallet.com’s the investments and insurance businesses and weather derivative trading at Citadel Investment Group, a hedge fund.

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