Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Master Trust was formed in 2002 to manage retirement plan assets for the staff of the nation's oldest pediatric hospital, itself founded in 1855. CHOP is structurally intertwined with the University of Pennsylvania through the Perelman School of Medicine, sharing faculty, research programs, and clinical operations — a relationship that anchors its institutional identity. The board is led by Gregory Davis, who runs investment policy at Vanguard as the firm's President and Chief Investment Officer. The Trust operates independently of CHOP's philanthropic foundation, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation, which manages a separate pool of charitable assets. The Trust's disclosed strategy indicates a diversified private-market mandate that covers venture capital from seed to late stage, buyouts, growth equity, mezzanine, distressed debt, secondaries, and special situations. It also indicates a commitment to co-investment alongside external managers, reflecting a resource-aware operation that partners with GPs rather than building a large in-house direct-investing team. While no specific portfolio companies have been publicly disclosed by the Trust, its strategy list signals exposure across the full capital structure and lifecycle of private companies. Geographically, the Trust's scope is consistent with a US-focused portfolio, though its broad mandate does not explicitly limit investments to North America. The Trust's scale is difficult to quantify: it does not publicly disclose assets under management, and its headcount is not separately reported from the larger CHOP financial administration. CHOP itself posted over $4.5 billion in operating revenue in fiscal 2024, per its own financial statements, and its affiliated foundation has an asset base of several hundred million dollars — but no direct read-across to the Master Trust's investment pool is possible. CHOP maintains a physical footprint beyond its main Philadelphia campus, including the Middleman Family Pavilion in King of Prussia, New Jersey property holdings, and the Roberts Center for Pediatric Research. The Corporate Council connects CHOP to regional financial institutions including Bank of America, FS Investments, and Independence Blue Cross. The Trust's structural distinction lies in its governance: it is guided by a board chair who simultaneously serves as the top investment executive at one of the world's largest asset managers. This creates an unusual alignment of fiduciary best practices and institutional investment knowledge at the oversight level, even if the day-to-day investment function is executed by a smaller internal or outsourced team. Unlike hospital systems that outsource pension management entirely, CHOP maintains its own Master Trust with a broad, multi-strategy private-markets charter that suggests a deliberate and engaged investment posture.