Jul 20, 2026 · 51m · capital-allocators
Senior Decision Makers: Luis Laboy, Hewlett Foundation (EP.512)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the Senior Decision Makers miniseries, Luis Laboy, Director of Public Equities at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, shares how his fifteen years as an emerging markets hedge fund investor shaped his approach to portfolio construction, manager selection, and navigating macroeconomic risk convergence.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Ted holds 16.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Ted as informed peer 1.9 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 1.1 Ted pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Ted, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:15 Calling out scripted risk management practices
Luis recounts bluntly interrupting a prospective fund manager to state that their long-winded response was an exact replica of his old hedge fund marketing script used to mask deficient risk management.
Hardest push from Ted ▶ 39:24 Holding the guest to account on the Japan tradeHank pins Luis down on whether his impulsive 'buy big, buy a lot' reaction actually materialized into a substantial portfolio allocation at Hewlett.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 40:47 Macro reframe on emerging versus developed market risksLuis dismantles conventional macro boundaries by illustrating how developed markets now exhibit emerging market political, fiscal, and social risks, invalidating traditional spreadsheet models.
Ted holds their own ▶ 44:00 Holistic synthesis of guest's 30-year career narrativeHank demonstrates deep comprehension by integrating Luis's childhood dinner debates, engineering background, and mentorship lessons into a cohesive narrative arc.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Ted as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Ted pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital Allocators Announcement: Open Roles for Investor Relations and Chief of Staff | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Ted Seides gives a solo announcement regarding internal hiring for open roles at Capital Allocators. There is no interview dynamic present. | |
| Sponsor Spotlight: AlphaSense, Intapp DealCloud, and Admired Leadership | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Ted Seides reads sponsor messages for AlphaSense, Intapp DealCloud, and Admired Leadership. Monologue ad block with zero interaction scores. | |
| Upbringing, Contrarian Roots, and Formative Dinner Table Debates | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Hank prompts Luis about his upbringing and entry into finance. Luis shares how big family dinners and political simulations fostered his contrarian disposition. | |
| Launching a Career: Dresdner Bank, Ana Marshall, and Joining Everest Capital | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Luis recounts his early career path from Mexico to San Francisco under Ana Marshall and his move to Everest Capital in response to open-ended interview prompts. | |
| The Turning Point at Everest: Making Money vs. Being Right in Brazil | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Luis recounts facing potential termination after six months at Everest before executing a high-stakes contrarian bet on post-election Brazil. Hank listens and prompts for the outcome. | |
| Multiple Roles at Everest and the Decision to Become an Allocator | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Luis describes wearing multiple hats across 15 years at Everest, marketing funds as an offensive/defensive strategy, and desiring a longer time horizon. | |
| Joining Hewlett and Applying Buy-Side Lessons to Institutional Allocation | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Luis describes transitioning to Hewlett and how watching full firm life cycles and human risk appetites over 15 years provided valuable allocator pattern recognition. | |
| Manager Selection Insights: Empathy, Questioning, and Unmasking Risk Management | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Luis explains how his background in marketing allows him to see through hedge fund jargon, citing an instance where he directly called out a manager's weak risk management. | |
| Early Portfolio Construction at Hewlett and the COVID-19 Portfolio Pivot | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Luis details stepping into Hewlett's public equity portfolio, analyzing underlying company exposures, and initiating a shift away from value managers during COVID. | |
| Balancing Portfolio Construction and Manager Sourcing: Explore vs. Exploit | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Luis explains the structural balance between exploit (concentrated core portfolio) and explore (sourcing emerging manager relationships). | |
| Mid-Roll Sponsor Break: Modernizing Investment Tech with Ridgeline | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Following a sponsor read for Ridgeline, Hank asks about manager hurdle rates. Luis draws an analogy to 'Married at First Sight' regarding objective criteria versus personal bias. | |
| Terminating Manager Relationships: Kill Lists and Fundamental Realignment | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Luis explains using Annie Duke-inspired 'kill lists' to redeem for structural misalignment rather than chasing short-term performance, alongside internal team decision mechanics. | |
| Shared Investment Philosophy and Divergent Decision Speeds: The Japan Case Study | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Luis recounts his fast decision-making pace compared to Ana Marshall's deliberate pace during a Japan research trip. Hank follows up directly to confirm whether they executed the trade. | |
| Reassessing Market Frameworks: Emerging Market Risks in Developed Economies | 2 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Luis delivers a masterclass on macro framing, demonstrating how geopolitical, regulatory, and polarization risks once unique to emerging markets now characterize developed markets. | |
| Navigating Disruption Risks and Long-Term Aspirations in Mentorship | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Luis explains how public equity managers navigate disruption risks and technological adaptation. Hank synthesizes Luis's entire career arc back to his mentor's early advice. | |
| Closing Questions: A Passion for Formula One Strategy and Manager Comparisons | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Hank asks closing personal questions, and Luis describes how his passion for Formula One strategy led him to mathematically compare Senna and Prost using manager selection metrics. | |
| Investment Pet Peeves: Buzzwords and the Ambiguity of 'Quality' | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Luis criticizes the vague buzzword 'quality' in pitch meetings and provides final advice to young allocators on building authentic, personalized investment frameworks. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Laboy: Ana Marshall's top advice for new investors is getting a CFA
“Ana's advice was get your CFA. Anybody who knows Ana, 25 years later, that would still be her same advice to anybody starting today.”
Laboy: Everest Capital hit 5-to-1 payout on Brazil's Lula election
“Within two months, the market went up 23%. We made our five to one payout on our option strategy, all the money on the cash trade.”
Laboy: PMs use fund marketing to stress-test ideas during LP meetings
“Marketing served two purposes. You had the defense and the offense. The defense was protecting myself against the down here. The offense was that I thought a lot about the portfolio and how I was investing it in those meetings.”
Laboy: Buy-side tenure helps LPs spot cultural shifts during diligence
“When Everest closed and the whole team moved to RWC, I got to see how the same group of people, their energy changed, how a culture changed, and there was a lot of learnings, because in the end, as allocators, we're sitting on the outside trying to understand …”
Laboy: Direct investors in LP roles must recalibrate their decision cadence
“There's a difference in cadence in decision making, even in the amount of research and analysis you do for every decision. You're calibrating that all the time. And I had perfected that for a high turnover world of direct investing. And when you move over to t…”
Laboy: Allocators should never second-guess managers during due diligence
“The goal is To ask managers questions that hopefully create new thoughts, but you never want to come across like you're second guessing a manager. That's not our job. Our job is to understand them and to understand whether our strategies are aligned.”
Laboy: Hewlett Foundation reduced value manager exposure during the COVID pandemic
“We ended up starting to reduce our exposure to, for example, value managers. We thought value would just be a tougher place to be going forward.”
Laboy: Hewlett's next-gen sleeve lowers confidence hurdles but maintains quality standards
“One of the structures that I did is I broke the portfolio into two where I had this core portfolio, and then you carve out a piece of the portfolio for this next generation set of managers where the hurdle isn't lower. We're still trying to find the same quali…”
Laboy: Lacking upfront criteria introduces personal bias risk into manager selection
“If I don't have a set of clear criteria ahead of time, I'm going to end up picking the shiny object that resonates with me. Then you're going to be introducing a certain factor risk, which is your own biases into the portfolio.”
Laboy: Hewlett Foundation maintains a documented 'kill list' for every manager
“One of the things that I've done, and we borrowed this from Annie Duke and her book Quit, we've put together what we call is a kill list. For every manager in our book, we have what we call kill lists and key debates.”
Laboy: Most Hewlett redemptions stem from internal strategy shifts, not talent
“What ends up happening more times than not is that You end up redeeming from a manager because we're shifting our perspective on what's changing in the market. We have to redeem from a manager that otherwise I think is extraordinarily talented, and I wish them…”
Laboy: Hewlett separates evaluating macro opportunity sets from specific manager selection
“When we're selecting a manager, we break apart opportunity set and manager selection. The steps are, we gain conviction on the opportunity set. Because we run as one team, one approach, Once we have an idea of the opportunity set, like at Everest, we're lookin…”
Laboy: The Hewlett Foundation made a major allocation to Japanese equities
“We have eventually bought big. We're invested in Japan.”
Laboy: Traditional emerging market risks now apply to developed markets
“Markets have indeed changed, and all of those risks that I mentioned now describe any country in the world, not just emerging markets and developed markets are somehow the bastions of the opposite of all of those things.”
Laboy: Old economy companies will differentiate through their application of technology
“It's no longer about tech versus the rest of the world. Old economy names are now going to differentiate themselves based on how they apply tech.”
Laboy: Pitching "quality compounders" cedes narrative control to the LP
“The minute a manager comes in and tells you that they invest in quality compounders, the part that we all don't realize is they've ceded control of the conversation now to the listener. When you use a buzzword like that, the listener is going to fill the gap i…”
Laboy: Top portfolio managers show coherence between strategy and emotional makeup
“This is what makes great PMs. Coherence. Their investment strategy aligns with how they think. Their emotional makeup. That's the most important thing we look for with a manager, is their alignment between their strategy and how they think.”