Lasell University

The endowment is managed through an outsourced chief investment officer relationship with Cambridge Associates. The university's investment committee includes Cambridge Associates managing directors Keon Holmes and Alexandra Dorf, effectively embedding the consultant's personnel directly into the governance structure. Board Chair Gerry DeRoche and Trustee Rena Clark, a managing partner at Laurel Oak Capital Partners, provide additional oversight.

Lasell uses a hybrid fund-of-funds approach with commitments to a Core Property Fund, an offshore opportunity fund, and an energy debt fund. The portfolio also includes direct real estate exposure through Lasell Village, the university's on-campus senior living community, and a small insurance-contract allocation. The strategy tilts toward fund commitments rather than direct operating-company investments, consistent with the university's limited internal investment staff.

Lasell Village is a non-profit senior living community built on university land. It functions as a commercial real estate asset within the endowment's portfolio while also serving the university's educational mission in gerontology and lifelong learning. The arrangement creates a dual-use asset that generates operating returns and academic programming value.

The Board of Trustees, chaired by Gerry DeRoche, holds fiduciary authority over the endowment. The investment committee draws directly from Cambridge Associates' Boston-based managing director pool, with Keon Holmes having recently served as board chair — an unusual overlap that collapses the typical distance between an OCIO provider and its client's boardroom.

No dedicated internal investment office exists. All manager selection, allocation, and portfolio monitoring flows through the Cambridge Associates OCIO relationship. The university does maintain direct real-estate interests and insurance contracts, but these are legacy holdings or mission-tied assets, not actively traded positions managed by in-house staff.

Josh Kraft, President of Kraft Family Philanthropies, serves on Lasell's Board of Overseers. The Kraft family's philanthropic arm is a named business partner, but no public records indicate a direct capital commitment from the family's core wealth to the university's endowment pool. His role appears to be governance-focused rather than a funding relationship.

At an estimated $45 million, Lasell's pool is significantly smaller than peer institutions in the Boston Consortium for Higher Education, which includes schools with nine- and ten-figure endowments. Lasell uses the consortium for operational cost-sharing rather than co-investment, keeping its capital deployment entirely separate from other member institutions' assets.