San Francisco Employees' Retirement System

Alison Romano serves as both Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, a dual mandate common in public pension funds that centralizes executive and portfolio authority. She oversees a team organized by public markets, private markets, and risk. Kurt Braitberg, Tanya Kemp, and Anna Langs each run a vertical reporting to her.

The system uses a mix of fund commitments, co-investments, and fund-of-funds structures. The internal research record shows exposure to buyout, venture, distressed debt, real estate (including industrial outdoor storage and digital infrastructure), and natural resources. SFERS does not market its own commingled vehicles to outside investors.

Both. The portfolio includes direct ownership of 111 Pine Street in San Francisco alongside fund commitments such as Milestone Real Estate Investors VI, Sculptor Real Estate Fund V, and a New Mountain net-lease trust. The direct exposure ties the system's returns to the same downtown recovery it helps underwrite.

SFERS has a documented partnership with Blackstone Alternative Asset Management through a vehicle called San Francisco Absolute Return Investors II. That structure sits inside the absolute-return allocation and likely offers exposure to Blackstone's hedge fund solutions platform.

SFERS became a Principles for Responsible Investment signatory in 2017 and holds seats on the ILPA ESG Advisory Committee and the Ceres Investor Network. It also participates in Climate Action 100+, which runs collaborative engagements with large corporate emitters. Staff turn up at CalAPRS and NASRA gatherings, which puts them in the room when peer funds shape governance standards.

A Retirement Board oversees the system. A.J. Thomas serves as president, Leona Bridges as vice president, and Joseph D. Driscoll as an elected member representing active and retired participants. The board governs through the customary public-meeting framework of a California city agency, which tends to slow information release relative to private-sector peers.

No. SFERS does not publish a single hard AUM figure on its website or in obvious public filings. External estimates place the fund at roughly $35 billion, drawn from an aggregation of portfolio and actuarial signals, but no number has been confirmed by the system itself.