Gilman School

Gilman School

Gilman School was founded in 1897 as the Country School for Boys, educating students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade on a single campus in Baltimore's Roland Park neighborhood. The institution's endowment emerged from a century of alumni loyalty and concentrated local philanthropy, most visibly from the W. P. Carey Foundation, which funded Carey Hall and the College Counseling Center. The endowment deploys capital across buyout, early-stage venture, seed, expansion-stage, and fund-of-funds structures. Named investment relationships on the board connect the school to StepStone Group through trustee John Avirett, and to Highfields Capital Management through lifetime trustee Jonathon S. Jacobson. The portfolio includes the campus itself, Carey Hall, and the Headmaster's House as physical assets alongside the financial endowment. The institution participates in the National Association of Independent Schools, the Association of Independent Maryland Schools, the International Boys' Schools Coalition, and the Global Online Academy consortium. Board leadership draws on the Baltimore financial community — Mark Fetting, who previously led Legg Mason, served as board president before Andrew Brooks assumed the role for the 2024-2025 term. What distinguishes the Gilman endowment is the density of investment professionals embedded in its governance rather than a dedicated internal investment office. Three board members hold or held senior roles at major asset managers, creating a committee structure that substitutes for the dedicated CIO model common at larger university endowments. The all-boys day-school format and single-campus architecture concentrate the capital base in a way that makes real asset holdings — school buildings, the headmaster's residence — an unusually large share of the total portfolio relative to peer independent schools.