Hackensack Meridian Health Defined Benefit Plan

Hackensack Meridian Health Defined Benefit Plan

Hackensack Meridian Health's Defined Benefit Plan operates as the pension vehicle for New Jersey's largest integrated health system, which formed from the 2016 merger of Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health. The plan funds retirement obligations for thousands of health system employees. Since 2020, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer Donna Snider has run the in-house investment office. Board leadership includes Keith Banks, Vice Chair at Bank of America, who serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees, and Robert C. Garrett, CEO of the health system. The portfolio allocates across a broad institutional mix. Public filings and Altss research point to exposure across alternative investments, common collective trusts, and direct real estate. One tangible holding is Hackensack Meridian Vitality Suites, a commercial wellness facility located at American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The plan also maintains an Airbus H135 air medical helicopter — an unusual hard asset on a pension balance sheet. While specific fund commitments and direct co-investment names are not publicly itemized, the plan's structure suggests participation in private equity, private credit, and hedge fund strategies through pooled vehicles. Team size and total AUM remain undisclosed. Snider's professional affiliations — including active participation in 100 Women in Finance and membership in Impact 100 Jersey Coast — indicate an investment office that operates with institutional peer connectivity. The plan sits within a health system that reported over $7 billion in annual revenue in recent years (public record), though the pension assets themselves are not broken out from the system's consolidated financials. The structural differentiator is the operational integration of a pension fund within an active health system that also owns commercial real estate and aviation assets. Unlike standalone public pension funds, this plan's investment office shares a balance sheet with an operating healthcare enterprise, which may influence liquidity needs, liability matching, and direct investment opportunities in healthcare-adjacent real assets.