Abigail Wattley
Chief Investment Officer, Williams College. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutiveinvestment.williams.edu ↗
Abigail Wattley is the Chief Investment Officer of Williams College, overseeing the college's endowment after succeeding founding CIO Collette Chilton in 2023. She previously served as the college's Deputy CIO and worked at Cambridge Associates.
1shows
1appearances
20statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Abigail Wattley said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Williams College endowment no longer backs dedicated oil and gas funds
“Similarly, we no longer do funds dedicated to the extraction of oil and gas.”
Allocators are rewarded for returns, not investment difficulty, says Wattley
“In this business, we don't get points for difficulty. We get points for making money. You don't necessarily have to always go find the least discovered idea. If somebody's recommending a manager to you over and over again, for example, probably worth taking th…”
Williams College avoids co-investments and direct investments at its $4.5B scale
“Things that we don't do right now that we've wondered, should we do more of? For example, we don't do co-invest. We don't underwrite direct investments. We're at four and a half billion.”
Late-stage venture winners are still compounding despite lack of liquidity
“For most of those companies, we agree with our venture managers that they're still compounding. Whether or not they're publicly traded, they're still great companies, and we're going to benefit long-term from their continued growth.”
Williams College recently raised allocation targets for buyouts and venture capital
“One of the things that we did do over the last few years was increase our target to buyouts and venture.”
Williams College endowment holds only 1% to 2% of portfolio in cash
“We're fully invested. We only maintain between one and two percent Of the portfolio in cash.”
Williams College cut its fixed income allocation from 10% to 1%
“We did reintroduce it about a year ago as rates came off of zero, but it's still a modest position. It's one percent position in our portfolio, and it's meant to be that rainy day. It's not a big piece of what we do anymore. It used to be 10% of the portfolio …”
Major AI process changes are premature given rapid tooling evolution, says Wattley
“The technology is changing so quickly that in some ways it feels premature to put a big stake in the ground and make some big investment or process change when in a quarter from now, The tools that are available to us could look entirely different or 10 times …”
Williams College uses LLMs to find off-sheet diligence references in its network
“Somebody discovered recently that it's great at suggesting off-sheet references. We found some really good off-sheet references by saying this is who we're doing diligence on. Who in my network would you talk to?”
Williams College endowment supports nearly 60% of the operating budget
“Our job is to earn a five percent real return to make sure that we're doing that with the appropriate level of risk that we're taking, ensuring that we have sufficient liquidity because we support nearly 60% of the operating budget for the college.”
Williams College automated data aggregation for 350 endowment line items
“We used to have probably a person and a half worth of people time doing that work. We have 350 different line items in this portfolio.”
Williams College investment team re-underwrote its entire portfolio for new directors
“We have re-underwritten the entire portfolio because you have to when you have new people coming on board and taking over responsibility for asset classes.”
Williams College endowment historically avoids secondary market transactions
“Another thing we talk a lot about, but we haven't done much of, is participate in the secondary market, whether it's selling pieces of our existing portfolio or buying pieces of other portfolios.”
Williams College targets a 27% allocation to absolute return and hedge funds
“Today, our target allocation across our long, short, and absolute return portfolio is 27% in aggregate.”
Williams College adjusts private market pacing models amid slower liquidity
“From our perspective, there is no big headline change in how we're thinking about the role of private asset classes. Where it does change is our modeling as it relates to our commitment pace modeling. If the expectation is going to be that things may be less l…”
Williams College endowment maintains $150 million in credit lines for liquidity
“We also maintain a hundred and fifty million dollars worth of lines of credit for the investment office.”
Early CIO tenure is exhausting because minor decisions set institutional precedent
“Early on, even the smallest decision can feel very consequential, because you feel like you're establishing the expectations, the path, the process. You think about things a lot, and it's exhausting. Eventually, you've set the path, Some of those little decisi…”
Seven investment professionals manage the $4.5B Williams College global portfolio
“We're seven investment people covering the global opportunity set.”
Williams College requires all investment staff to join AI working groups
“We have multiple different working groups across the team that are focused on different themes within AI. Everybody on the team is on at least one team, if not more.”
The other half of the tape: Abigail Wattley's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Colette Chilton 1
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Capital Allocators 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Abigail's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Chief Investment Officer, Williams College | 1 | 20 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Capital Allocators → |