McCall Cravens, CIO at Heinz Family Office, was the winner of Institutional Investor’s 2025 Family Office Investor of the Year award. II held its 8th annual Allocators’ Choice Awards earlier this month at the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan.
II spoke to Cravens after the event to discuss how she manages the single family office of the dynasty responsible for Heinz Ketchup, where she oversees all investment activities.
Part of the key to the office’s success, she said, is partnerships with people who demonstrate themselves as the best in their respective fields. “We have a professional, long-term-oriented governance structure that allows us to tune out the noise in the short term,” she said. “We don’t feel like we need to benchmark hug or chase the crowd.”
She added that she has been allowed the occasional period of underperformance, adding that patience leads to better results.
The portfolio has a heavy emphasis on alternatives and has generated significant alpha, particularly in international markets.
Like fellow nominee Julie Lawson, Cravens is also a strong advocate of maintaining a lean investment team, giving staff members the autonomy to run with their own ideas, while also being available as a sounding board and making sure that she is there to have open conversations and provide feedback.
“I try to make sure everyone has a voice at all times, so it feels more like a flat structure,” she said. “I want to welcome people to challenge my opinions and thoughts, and to not be afraid to bring up new ideas or issues with existing managers in the portfolio — really empowering them to be a real part of the investment process.”
In addition, she emphasized the value of a robust and supportive external network — though she added that it is important not to rely too heavily upon it.
“This is a hard job,” she said. “Every day you’re trying to find ways to outperform in a very competitive environment and market, but I also don’t like to sit here and act like I know all the answers. It is a balancing act, but it is important to not just follow the herd. That is a dangerous game and usually means you show up too late to the party.”
Cravens said that towards the start of her career she had relied more on emulating what her network was doing, but over time has become better at realizing that people have different objectives for their portfolios. Now, she uses that network as her eyes and ears on the ground, to trade notes and help identify new talent, but otherwise forges her own path.
“You really have to be focused on what objective you are trying to meet in your portfolio when you are doing diligence on any manager,” she said. “There are many factors that make it difficult to be apples-to-apples with anybody.”
Chad Myhre, managing director at Alfred duPont Charitable Trust, worked under Cravens for five years. “If you’re starting with a blank piece of paper and writing down the characteristics that you want in a CIO, McCall checks all the boxes: a proper temperament, empathy for those around her, and humility,” he said. “She’ll brag about her kids, but she never brags about herself.”
In such a competitive environment, it is refreshing to be around someone like Cravens, he continued, because she doesn’t see others as adversaries. “She’s so collaborative with everyone, willing to help at every opportunity she gets,” he said. “Because she doesn’t have an ego or insecurity issues, you root for her to be successful, and to an extent that is why she is so successful, right? Because everybody wants to compare notes with her.”
Myhre added that as a boss she was ready to share the blame when things went wrong but also step aside and allow her staff to take credit when things went well.
But it takes more than just people skills to run a family office. Cravens runs a long-term orientated, endowment style, multi-generational portfolio, that she says is not particularly unique — it just works.
A version of this article originally appeared in II's family office newsletter, Officium. Subscribe here to receive family office news in your inbox every Thursday.
