# Castilleja School Foundation

Castilleja School Foundation is a Foundation based in Palo Alto, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Foundation
- **Headquarters:** Palo Alto, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** 1310 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States
- **Founded:** 1907
- **Assets under management:** ~$179M (Altss estimate)
- **Website:** castilleja.org
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.castilleja.org/

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

Founded in 1907, Castilleja School Foundation is the non-profit entity supporting Castilleja School, a non-sectarian all-girls middle and high school in Palo Alto. The school's real estate footprint, built by the late Silicon Valley developer John Arrillaga, anchors the endowment's physical assets and ties it to one of Northern California's legendary real estate families. Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, a former trustee and the daughter of John Arrillaga, represents the connective tissue between the school and the valley's philanthropic elite, while funder support from The Sobrato Organization's John A. Sobrato Sr. and the Arrillaga Family Foundation historically underwrites campus expansion and capital campaigns. The endowment's investment strategy is not publicly documented as a discrete asset allocation, but the composition of its board reveals the sourcing funnel. The finance committee includes Raj Agrawal, who leads infrastructure at KKR, and Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder of Goodwater Capital, a consumer-tech venture firm. The foundation maintains a direct real estate portfolio of campus and residential properties along Bryant Street, Emerson Street, and Melville Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, plus municipal bond exposure in California. The physical campus modernization, including an underground parking garage completed in recent years, doubles as a long-term, yield-bearing commercial asset in one of the world's most supply-constrained housing markets. With an estimated $179 million in assets (Altss estimate), the foundation operates with a lean, non-professionalized investment staff, steering capital through its volunteer trustee board. There are no adjacent multi-family office vehicles or disclosed co-investment clubs. The model mirrors that of many elite independent school endowments — a small pool of capital levered to the calling networks of a powerful board — but amplified by its Palo Alto zip code and the sheer density of technology wealth among its 115-year alumnae base. What distinguishes the Castilleja Foundation structurally is the asymmetry between its modest nominal endowment and the latent capital its governance board could call in a campaign. The board is stacked with senior leaders from Meta, KKR, Venrock, Goodwater Capital, and Menlo Equities — a group capable of writing small checks from the endowment's core and sourcing enormous follow-on co-investment when needed. The foundation does not face the disclosure or pacing pressures of a university endowment, yet it functions as a quiet allocation hub for a strand of valley wealth that rarely shows up in LP databases.

## Sectors

- Education
- Real Estate

## People

- Zac Zeitlin — Chair, Board of Trustees
- Odette Harris — Vice-Chair, Board of Trustees
- Raj Agrawal — Trustee
- Jennifer Newstead — Trustee
- Mike Schroepfer — Trustee
- Chi-Hua Chien — Trustee
- Bob Kocher — Trustee
- Allison Koo — Chair, Buildings and Grounds Committee

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at the Castilleja School Foundation?

The endowment is overseen by the Board of Trustees, with no full-time chief investment officer. The board's finance committee includes Raj Agrawal, a partner and head of infrastructure at KKR, and Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder of venture firm Goodwater Capital. Key investment and real estate decisions are made by trustees with deep operating and investing experience in technology and private markets.

### How does the endowment source its investment opportunities?

Sourcing flows through the professional networks of its trustees, who hold senior roles at Meta, KKR, Venrock, and Goodwater Capital. The board's composition gives the foundation direct access to top-quartile venture managers, co-investment opportunities in infrastructure and growth equity, and the proprietary deal flow of one of the most connected campuses in the Bay Area.

### What is the foundation's known posture on co-investments alongside external GPs?

The board includes multiple active fund managers and institutional investors, making co-investment a natural posture. KKR's Agrawal and Goodwater's Chien are both positioned to offer the foundation overlooked co-investment capacity in their respective funds or direct deals. Allocation size caps the foundation's independent check-writing, but the board's collective co-investment firepower extends well beyond the stated ~$179 million endowment.

### Where does the underlying capital come from?

The endowment is built on donations from Bay Area families over more than a century, with major gifts from the late developer John Arrillaga, the Sobrato family, and the Arrillaga Family Foundation. Tuition fees and real estate income from the school's Palo Alto properties also replenish the operating budget, though the investment portfolio itself grows from the accumulated gifts and returns on investment.

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Last updated: 2026-08-11T02:43:31.692Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/castilleja-school-foundation

Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology