NYSNA Pension Plan & Benefits Fund

NYSNA Pension Plan & Benefits Fund

The New York State Nurses' Association Pension Plan & Benefits Fund launched in 1972 to secure retirement benefits for registered nurses across the New York metropolitan area. It operates as a multiemployer defined-benefit plan, jointly governed by trustees drawn from the New York State Nurses Association and participating hospital systems. A technical quirk of its Taft-Hartley structure means the plan cannot operate as a single-family pool answering to one founder; instead, labor and management trustees set investment policy together. Tate runs a portfolio divided across corporate obligations, government debt, hedge funds, real-estate limited-partnership interests, and an increasingly active venture sleeve. Confirmed exposures include Alterra IOS Venture II, a US-focused industrial vehicle, alongside direct allocations to growth-stage and distressed-debt strategies. Real-estate mandates span mixed-use funds and physical property partnerships, feeding the plan's cash-flow matching objective. Geographic concentration tilts toward North America, though the plan participates in select cross-border co-investment dialogues through CAASA, the Canadian Association of Alternative Strategies & Assets. The venture posture extends from seed-stage checks up through late-stage growth, often executed via fund-of-funds commitments that layer external-GP selection atop the internal CIO process. The investment team runs from Albany and draws operational support from Director of Operations Cordell W. Thomas II. The board includes Chairperson Jeffrey Cohen, Vice President of Labor Relations at The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Secretary Nancy Kaleda, Deputy Executive Director of NYSNA. The plan maintains membership in Institutional Real Estate, Inc., a network of large institutional property investors — positioning the fund inside deal-flow circles that individual hospital endowments rarely penetrate. What separates this plan from hundreds of similarly sized Taft-Hartley funds is the collision of a union-sponsored governance model with an alternative-asset appetite usually reserved for single-family offices. Tate reports to a jointly chaired board rather than a sovereign wealth fund minister — and still the portfolio reaches into distressed debt, venture, and real-estate partnerships. That dual identity forces the plan to balance nurse-facing liability rigidity with principal-risk-taking that requires board-level fluency in illiquid asset classes.