Shenandoah University

Shenandoah University

Tracy Fitzsimmons leads Shenandoah University, a private institution founded in 1875 that serves roughly 4,000 students across six schools from its main campus in Winchester, Virginia. Trustees James R. Wilkins III and Mark J. Ohrstrom — the latter running Larkspur Management — anchor a board whose personal investment interests align with the university's portfolio posture. The endowment does not publicly break out its asset allocation, but its owned assets reveal a pronounced real-asset and property tilt. Holdings include the Vaden Campus Commons and Winchester Armory Property in Virginia as well as a commercial building in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield adds land exposure, while the Andrei Kushnir Art Collection sits across three campus buildings. A student-managed investment fund operates on campus, but its relationship to the broader endowment is not public. The university maintains satellite sites in Leesburg, Virginia and Clarke County but reports no global investment offices. Trustee G. Cabell Williams III, a senior managing director at Farragut Mezzanine Partners, introduces private-credit fluency to the committee. In May 2024, the university — acting through its board and the Shenandoah Valley Partnership, of which it is a member — participated in regional economic development discussions focused on workforce alignment and commercial property reuse (per Shenandoah Valley Partnership, May 2024). What distinguishes Shenandoah's asset management is not a novel portfolio-construction model but a governance structure that concentrates investment oversight in a committee chair separate from the sitting president. Dr. Mirza runs Sterling Management Group externally, meaning the endowment is supervised by an active operator rather than a career university administrator — a structure that blurs the line between institutional oversight and the kind of principal-driven judgment that characterizes single-family offices.