Matthew W. Wright

Matthew W. Wright is the Vice Chancellor for Investments of Vanderbilt University.  In this capacity, he is responsible for the management of approximately $4 Billion in stock, bonds, venture capital, leveraged buyout, real estate, timber, and oil and gas investments.  Prior to joining Vanderbilt University, Matthew was the Director of Investments at Emory University for over six years.  While at Emory his primary duties included analysis and implementation of asset allocation policies, investment strategy, and management of the marketable investment portfolios comprised of Global Equities, Fixed Income, Marketable Alternatives, and REITs.  He was also responsible for initiating and implementing Emory’s internally managed portfolio and trading capabilities.  Prior to joining Emory University, Matthew worked for Bank of America Capital Management's Quantitative Strategies Group where he was responsible for portfolio management and equity trading.  His previous work experience also includes product development at Gartmore Global Partners and investment analysis for the Xerox Corporation Trust Investments. Matthew graduated from Seton Hall University with a bachelor’s degree in Finance and has an M.B.A. from the University of Rochester. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a member of the CFA Institute and Chicago Quantitative Alliance.

In July, 2007, Philadelphia native Matthew Wright, 39, left his position as director of investments at Emory University to serve as vice chancellor for investments at Vanderbilt and to be responsible for managing Vanderbilt’s almost $4 billion endowment.  Matthew Wright and his wife Verna have two daughters, ages 6 and 9.

Matthew Wright’s comments:

My mom and dad were educators, and I did all those things you are supposed to do – worked hard in school, played sports, went to college. But I did not know this was what I was going to do when I grew up. I got an academic scholarship to Seton Hall University and played baseball there. During the summer of my junior year at Seton Hall, I got an internship with Drexel Burnham Lambert, which continued through the school year on a part-time basis. Through this experience, I realized that I wanted to focus on investment management and seek to become a portfolio manager. So I went to graduate school at the University of Rochester. By that time, Wall Street had slowed down quite a bit, so I opted to go the corporate route. After interning with Xerox Corporation, I was hired to work in their Washington, D.C., office. My fiancée at the time, Verna, now my wife, was based in D.C., so we settled there for about a year and a half.

I accepted a transfer to Xerox’s corporate headquarters in Stamford, Conn., in the mid-’90s, where I worked in the pension area for three years. We had aspirations to start a family, and Stamford was not where we wanted to lay down our roots. My wife is from the Virgin Islands, so the cold winters in the Northeast really were not her cup of tea. We started looking at the South, and ultimately I joined Emory University (near Atlanta) to serve as director of investments, following four years at Bank of America where I served as a quantitative portfolio manager for pension plans, endowments and high net worth individuals. One of the major things that we did at Emory was recruit staff and transition a portfolio that was dominated by a single stock to a broadly diversified portfolio. Today, Emory’s portfolio is well positioned and very competitive with peer institutions. While at Emory, I got a call regarding Vanderbilt – and Vanderbilt is a very prestigious institution – but we were happy where we were. The firm leading the national search was very persistent and convinced me I should check out the opportunity, and I did. From the start, in terms of meeting several of the investment committee members and meeting the people in administration, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity. When we visited campus we went to the first playoff game for the baseball team. As we were sitting there, we just thought this would be such a great environment in which to raise our children.

Why work in an academic setting instead of Wall Street?

The stability of working in an endowment office, from an investment standpoint, was very appealing to me. One of the things my wife and I talked about when we were considering this is that universities do not relocate people, they typically do not acquire other institutions, and they don’t spin off other institutions. So professionally, this would be an opportunity to have hands-on experience with an investment portfolio and build a team without a lot of instability.

The investments world is fascinating and very challenging mentally. If you are very deliberate in what you do and very disciplined, you tend to be successful. I find that much more appealing than work that is more random in nature. True, returns can be random, but success relative to the market is the thing that really motivates and drives me. In terms of this particular opportunity, we have the chance to do a lot of different things with the endowment, which has exposure to a variety of managers investing in exciting opportunities within equities, bonds and real estate all over the world.
 
The endowment is a pot of money that has been endowed, or donated, to Vanderbilt.. There are about 2,300 individual endowments within that. There are endowments for the schools, for professors, for chairs, for scholarships – a number of different things. Donations to the institution, some recent and some a long time ago, are restricted; in other words, they were earmarked by the donors to go to a particular school or program. The goal is that this money will grow over time so that, for example, a donation will provide not just one scholarship for one person, but many for a number of years. We have a strong foundation and portfolio. We are going to strive to find the best opportunities in which to invest in and around the globe.