Author: Amy Paterson

TIFF Investment Management has appointed a new President as part of the firm’s succession planning.

Kane Brenan, who most recently served as Global Head and Co-Chief Investment Officer of the Global Portfolio Solutions (GPS) group for Goldman Sachs, will become TIFF’s President effective Monday, April 13, 2020. Kane and TIFF CEO, Dick Flannery, will work closely together to ensure a smooth leadership transition for the firm and the charitable organizations it serves.

Brenan had been with Goldman Sachs for over 20 years, was a partner in the firm, and had worked with some of Goldman’s largest pension and endowment clients in an outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) capacity.

In a joint statement, Neal Triplett (Chair of the TIFF Board and President of Duke University’s endowment office) and Dick Flannery said: “We are delighted to add someone with Kane Brenan’s extraordinary qualifications to the TIFF senior management team. His knowledge and experience, when combined with his distinctive ‘values first’ ethos, will serve TIFF’s non-profit members well for many years to come.”

TIFF announced its formal search for a President last fall.  At almost the same time, Mr. Brenan announced his intention to leave Goldman Sachs to return to the Philadelphia area, where his family lives.  The stars aligned and TIFF identified a talented industry veteran, who sits on multiple boards, and has a passion for non-profit work, to add to the firm’s executive team and eventually replace Mr. Flannery.

“I have had an extraordinary experience at Goldman Sachs and I am now excited to join TIFF and pursue the firm’s important mission. I look forward to meeting TIFF’s members and helping each of them achieve their investment and organizational goals. TIFF represents two remarkably motivating pursuits – non-profit work and investing.  I am looking forward to getting started on those pursuits.” – Kane Brenan

Now seems like a good time to share our view on where markets and investors are on the topic of Sustainable Investing today. To start, investor confusion around the terminology and why we should care seems to be ebbing. Yes, sustainability is still defined and perceived in myriad ways, but what it boils down to largely is the efficient use of resources. Any system—a company, an industry, a market, an ecosystem—requires resources to survive. To the extent those resources are harmed or depleted, the survival of that system is at risk. To the extent those resources are maintained or renewed over time, that system has what it needs to sustain itself at least and potentially even thrive. The sustainability movement is a call for change in how we manage our resources, in particular our environmental, human and social resources. Thoughtless exploitation of those resources can work for some period of time and for some portion of the population, but in the end that approach is unsustainable.

Sustainable investing is an extension of this concept. The basic idea is to invest in businesses that employ best practices around the use of all forms of capital: financial, environmental, human, and social. Those businesses possess the best chance not just to survive, but to thrive. And of course sustainable investing also means avoiding businesses with high costs and headline risks due to poor governance and exploitative behaviors. Such behaviors are less and less tolerated by consumers, governments, and regulators. Increasingly, these behaviors make them less attractive to investors, too.