It’s a sultry early May morning, and Memphis, Tennessee, is wilting under white skies as a buoyant, freshly pressed Mark Yusko strides onto the ballroom stage of the Civil Warera Peabody Hotel. He fairly radiates energy. In six years as investment chief, he overhauled the portfolio of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and transformed himself into a prophet of alternative asset management, traveling the country preaching the virtue, the joy, the sheer necessity of absolute-return strategies to institutional money managers and rich individuals, some...
