Children's Hospital Boston Pension Plan

Children's Hospital Boston Pension Plan

The Children's Hospital Boston Pension Plan is the retirement vehicle for employees of Boston Children's Hospital, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate. It does not operate as an autonomous corporate pension fund. Instead, Philip Rotner, the hospital's Chief Investment Officer, manages its assets alongside the hospital's broader endowment pool within a unified investment office. Rotner also serves on the Investment Committee of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (PRIM) Board, linking the plan's governance to the state's $100B-plus public pension system. The plan's investment posture is shaped by its dual identity: a defined-benefit fiduciary and an academic-medical institutional investor. Its real-asset strategy is visible through a partnership with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a NYSE-listed life-science REIT that co-develops laboratory facilities near the hospital's Longwood Medical Area campus. The portfolio includes the Alexandria Center for Life Science – Fenway at 421 Park Drive. On the alternative-investment side, Director of Investments Alison Svizzero focuses on private equity allocations, though specific fund commitments and portfolio company names remain internal. The plan participates in the Boston Acquisition Fund, a local vehicle that aggregates public and institutional capital for workforce-housing preservation in Boston neighborhoods. The investment team operates from the hospital's Boston headquarters. Kevin B. Churchwell serves as President and CEO, with Doug Vanderslice as System CFO. No separate headcount for the investment office is public. The plan's governance peers extend beyond healthcare — Rotner's PRIM committee role embeds the plan in Massachusetts public-pension oversight, while the hospital's membership in FCLTGlobal signals a formal orientation toward long-horizon investing. No recent structural change such as a CIO transition or new fund vehicle has been publicly announced. What distinguishes this plan from other hospital-affiliated pension funds is the tight coupling between its real-asset exposure and the hospital's parent operating entity. Rather than investing passively in commingled real estate vehicles, the plan's relationship with Alexandria constitutes a direct, co-located life-science development pipeline. That alignment — retirement capital helping build the physical campus where the hospital's future clinical revenue will be generated — is not typical among single-employer pension plans. Governance flows through Rotner's dual role as internal CIO and PRIM committee member, making the plan simultaneously a hospital fiduciary and a participant in Massachusetts state-level pension policymaking.