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In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

HIGHLIGHTS: Robert Wallace

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Norges Bank Investment Management

In Good Company, Business, Norges Bank, Nicolai Tangen

4.8 • 186 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We've curated a special 10-minute version of the podcast for those in a hurry.  

 

Here you can listen to the full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/robert-wallace-managing-stanfords-endowment-balancing/id1614211565?i=1000723660479&l=nb


What shapes the investment strategy behind one of higher education's largest endowments? Nicolai Tangen sits down with Robert Wallace, CEO of Stanford Management Company, who oversees more than $40 billion for Stanford University. From his unique journey as a professional ballet dancer to becoming a leading institutional investor, they explore the endowment model's challenges, the art of selecting private equity partners, and what makes truly great investors excel. Robert shares how he transformed Stanford's investment approach by dramatically consolidating their external partnerships, and reveals why passion for the work matters more than financial rewards. Stanford's endowment distributes $2 billion annually, supporting students and research. Tune in for an insightful conversation!


In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.


The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Isabelle Karlsson.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi, everybody. Tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday for the long

0:05.8

version. Tune in on Wednesdays. Hi, everyone. I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian

0:12.3

sovereign wealth fund. And today, I'm in really good company with Rob Wallace, who's built one of the

0:17.8

most impressive careers in institutional investing.

0:25.2

Now, Rob is the president and CEO of Stanford Management Company, and if you are on screen,

0:30.5

you can see the wonderful campus behind him. I mean, my, hey, I'm envious here.

0:38.5

The Stanford Endowment runs more than $40 billion, and is one of the most successful university endowments anywhere.

0:39.7

His journey took him from learning under David Swenson at Yale onto leading Alta Advisors,

0:47.1

a London-based investment firm before joining Stanford in 2015.

0:52.3

And here he has delivered exceptionally returns.

0:55.0

So well done, Rob, and great to have you on.

0:58.0

Nice to be with you, Nicolai.

0:59.0

Just kick off.

1:00.0

What's the kind of core investment philosophy at Stanford?

1:04.0

Yeah, it's actually reasonably simple.

1:08.0

So we start with, like any institutional investor, we start with the goals we have for the endowment.

1:14.7

And if you're a perpetual educational endowment like Stanford, you generally have two primary goals.

1:20.2

The first is you want your endowment to provide a material amount of support for the current generations of students and scholars.

1:26.9

So this year we're

1:28.3

distributing about $2 billion from the Stanford Endowment to support the current operating

1:34.3

budget of Stanford. And that support is one of the reasons that Stanford is one of the least

1:41.5

expensive private four-year colleges to attend in the country.

...

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