This summer, I am working at The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF). As the name indicates, TIFF is an investment management firm that helps other institutions manage their assets. To be more precise, TIFF works as an OCIO (Outsourced Chief Investment Officer) for many non-profit foundations, such as university endowments and charitable organizations. Different from many asset management jobs that people are used to, TIFF does not make investments in the stock market or private sector ourselves, instead, we spend a lot of time looking for talented managers at other funds and then give them a portion of our money for them to invest.
My role as the summer intern in the public equity team is to assist in the process of manager sourcing and screening. A large part of my work is to attend different manager meetings and try to understand their investment strategies. It is always a learning process because each manager has a unique strategy to outperform other competitors. For example, we’ve talked to managers that specialize in shorting overvalued stocks. They thoroughly read a company’s annual financial reports and try to find fraud in statements. At the same time, there are investors who only long stocks. Some investors do systematic trading, while others do fundamental investment. Some managers specialized in a certain industry, other managers spread their investment universe all over the world. There are all kinds of managers, and our job as an OCIO is to 1) pick the most talented manager to work with us, and 2) manage the overall risk of our portfolio.
Asset management has always been my pursuit because I thought I would get to apply statistical modeling and probability theories in the process of return estimation and risk management. To a large extent, my original understanding of this job was correct: this job requires a lot of linear regression modeling and probability simulation ability. However, there is another aspect of the work that was quite unexpected to me: this work is also about building connections with managers. We are constantly reaching out to managers we haven’t talked to before, or scheduling catch-up calls with managers that we already build a connection with. Even if some managers are not suitable for our current portfolio construction, we would still keep in touch with them.
After this internship, I realized one thing: I prefer the public market over the private market. Many times, people succeed in a private market because they have exclusive information, which requires you to have very strong social skills and strong connections. On the other hand, all the information is available to every player in the public market. To have an edge, people need to form a unique understanding of the market and develop a system to precisely execute their strategies.
TIFF is an incredible company. It has a very flat structure: On the first day of work, we had the incredible opportunity to have lunch with our CEO Kane Brenan. We are encouraged to talk to people in the other teams to learn more about the investment landscape of TIFF. Each of the interns has a mentor that will guide us through any questions we may have. We are also assigned a summer-long project to investigate topics that interest us. I had a wonderful experience at TIFF. Interestingly, I first learned about TIFF through a Bryn Mawr alumna. In fact, I got most of my networking opportunities and interview opportunities through Bi-Co connections. So, if you are reading this and want to find a job/internship for your summer, please leverage our great alumni network.
