Cook Children's Health Care System

Cook Children's Health Care System

Cook Children's Health Care System has operated in Fort Worth since 1918, growing into an eight-company pediatric network that includes a medical center, physician group, health plan, and home health services. Rick W. Merrill leads the system as President and CEO, with the roughly $151 million endowment and long-term investment pool sitting under SVP and Chief Institutional Investment Officer Tony Bagwell. The system's nonprofit structure means its investable base is generated through sustained operating activity rather than the discrete liquidity event that seeds most family-office-style allocators. Bagwell's portfolio spans a real-asset-heavy mix, with direct commercial real estate representing a material allocation. System-owned properties include the flagship 801 Seventh Avenue medical center campus, the Dodson Specialty Clinics, a new medical center in Prosper, and a significant West Tower expansion at Eighth Avenue and Cooper Street. The system also holds land on Clayton Road and a Rosedale Office Building. Beyond real estate, the endowment participates in regional economic and venture initiatives — Cook Children's is a partner and investor in the Dallas Regional Chamber's Tomorrow Fund, a vehicle for regional business development. The investment office has produced institutional-grade talent: prior CIO Patrick O'Connor and Deputy CIO Apurva Mehta left to co-found Summit Peak Investments, an independent investment firm. This talent export maps a small but sophisticated internal team executing across a perpetual-capital mandate. Strategic affiliations extend into the broader North Texas infrastructure, with Cook Children's executives serving on the board of trustees for the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council and the system maintaining a medical-education partnership with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The endowment's structural distinction is its integration with an actively operating care-delivery system. Unlike standalone foundations that grant from a separated endowment corpus, Cook Children's investment office stewards capital tightly coupled to the balance sheet of a major pediatric provider — the capital base can thicken with operating surpluses, and investment posture must account for the system's continuous capital-expenditure rhythm, from hospital towers to air-ambulance fleets.