Sonoma County Employees' Retirement Association

Sonoma County Employees' Retirement Association

SCERA administers retirement and health benefits for Sonoma County workers through a hybrid defined-benefit plan governed by the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937. CEO Julie Wyne, in the role since 2013, manages day-to-day operations alongside Assistant CEO and Chief Legal Counsel Cristina Hess, while the Board of Retirement sets policy with Chair Bob Williamson and County Treasurer-Tax Collector Erick Roeser providing fiscal oversight. The association runs its own member portal, MySCERA, for personal account management and benefit estimates. Investment strategy under CIO James Failor mixes direct real asset commitments with allocations to institutional fund vehicles, with no publicly disclosed target allocation percentages. The portfolio spans multiple asset classes — agriculture, commercial real estate, infrastructure, and special situations credit. Named fund relationships include UBS Trumbull Property Fund and JPMorgan Strategic Property Fund for US commercial real estate exposure, Fiera Comox Global Agriculture Fund and UBS Agrivest Farmland Fund for agricultural holdings, and IFM Global Infrastructure Fund plus KKR Diversified Core Infrastructure Fund for infrastructure. Davidson Kempner Special Opportunities Funds III and IV appear in the special situations sleeve, indicating a willingness to pursue dislocation-driven returns alongside core infrastructure. June 2025: SCERA's Investment Committee convened its regular monthly meeting, part of a governance calendar that also includes separate meetings for the audit committee, disability committee, and full retirement board. The board itself saw membership updates as of December 2025, with elections closing in October 2025 after the nomination period ended. SCERA participates actively in California's public-pension ecosystem — CEO Wyne sits on the SACRS Legislative Committee, and the association holds memberships in CALAPRS, NAPPA, and the Council of Institutional Investors, reflecting a governance posture that connects local fiduciary duty to statewide and national policy advocacy. The association's structural differentiator lies in its dual role under California's 1937 Act framework: SCERA both manages a pension trust and operates as a direct-service health-benefits administrator for county retirees. This bundles investment governance with member-facing benefit delivery, creating an operational footprint broader than a typical trust-only pension office. The board includes the elected county auditor-controller-treasurer-tax collector as a statutory member, embedding county fiscal authority directly into plan oversight — an architecture that ties pension decisions to the county's broader financial condition in a way that standalone pension authorities cannot replicate.