Dakota Live! Podcast
The Dakota Live! Podcast is designed for your fundraising needs. The goal of this podcast is to help you better know the people behind the investment decisions. Dakota connects investment salespeople with leading investment decision makers, ensuring you always know who to call and how to approach the markets you are targeting. Dakota Live! presents investment sales people industry and marketing expertise to make their jobs easier.
Dakota Live! Podcast
From Spanish Teacher to $18B OCIO CEO | Tim Yates, Commonfund OCIO
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On this episode of Dakota Live!, host Robert Morier sits down with Tim Yates, President & CEO of Commonfund OCIO, whose path to leading an $18 billion investment platform is anything but typical — he started out teaching Spanish and Italian at Fordham Prep in the Bronx.
Tim shares how a rotational analyst role pulled him into private equity, what emerging markets investing in Latin America taught him about risk and currency, and how the 2003 market dislocation gave birth to Commonfund's OCIO business.
He and Robert dig into how endowments and foundations actually think about return objectives, risk budgeting, and illiquidity, why Commonfund backs specialist managers over sprawling firms, and what the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments reveals about how nonprofits invest.
They close on private credit, talent and culture, and managing portfolios in a "VUCA" world.
Commonfund was founded in 1971 with a grant from the Ford Foundation as a mission-driven nonprofit built to serve nonprofits. Commonfund OCIO focuses exclusively on the nonprofit world and oversees more than $18 billion (as of 3/31/26) on behalf of foundations, endowments, and other mission-driven organizations.
