# The Dalton School

The Dalton School is an Endowment / Foundation based in New York, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Endowment / Foundation
- **Headquarters:** New York, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** 108 East 89th Street, New York, NY 10128, United States
- **Founded:** 1919
- **Assets under management:** Approximately $115 million (Altss estimate)
- **Website:** www.dalton.org
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/school/the-dalton-school/

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

Founded in 1919, The Dalton School operates as a private college preparatory school on Manhattan's Upper East Side under its distinct pedagogical framework, the "Dalton Plan." The school's financial nucleus is its endowment, a separate pool of assets supporting roughly 1,300 enrolled students across three physical campus locations in New York City. Trustee David Sambur, Co-Head of Private Equity at Apollo Global Management, and Trustee Dasha Smith, EVP and Chief Administrative Officer for the NFL, together bring significant alternatives and large-scale asset management expertise. Former Trustee Roy Swan directs impact investments at the Ford Foundation. This governance implies a bias toward private equity, hedge fund, and real asset allocations common among mature, board-directed independent school endowments in the Northeast corridor. The board's senior leadership includes José Manuel De Jesús as Head of School, Aly Jeddy as Board President, and Michael Hwang as CFO. The endowment itself is modest relative to university peers, with Altss estimating its size at approximately $115M. Dalton maintains membership in the Ivy Preparatory School League and the New York Interschool consortium, peer networks that routinely share investment and operational benchmarks, though no formal co-investment vehicle has been disclosed. Dalton's structural distinction lies in the explicit presence of senior alternative-asset practitioners on its governing board, a recruitment pattern which embeds institutional-grade investment oversight directly into an independent school's endowment governance. This board composition reduces the typical principal-agent gap between volunteer trustees and professional money managers, making the endowment an unusually direct conduit between institutional asset management expertise and K-12 educational funding.

## Sectors

- Education

## People

- José Manuel De Jesús — Head of School
- Aly Jeddy — President of the Board of Trustees
- Michael Hwang — Assistant Head of School for Operations and CFO
- David Sambur — Trustee; Co-Head of Private Equity at Apollo Global Management
- Roy Swan — Former Trustee and Search Committee Chair; Director at Ford Foundation
- Dasha Smith — Trustee; EVP and Chief Administrative Officer for the NFL
- Bruce Menin — Secretary of the Board of Trustees

## Questions

### Who governs The Dalton School's endowment?

The Board of Trustees holds fiduciary responsibility. Named members with direct institutional investment experience include David Sambur, Co-Head of Private Equity at Apollo Global Management, and Dasha Smith, EVP and Chief Administrative Officer for the NFL. Former Trustee Roy Swan, a Director at the Ford Foundation, served as Search Committee Chair during recent leadership transitions.

### How is The Dalton School's endowment structurally separated from its operating budget?

The endowment is held as a distinct pool of assets under the oversight of the Board of Trustees, with Assistant Head of School for Operations Michael Hwang serving as CFO. As a 501(c)(3) organization, Dalton Schools Inc. maintains the required legal and accounting separation between restricted endowment funds and annual operating cash flows, which are primarily driven by tuition from approximately 1,300 students.

### How does the board's composition influence the endowment's investment strategy?

The recruitment of senior alternative-asset professionals including David Sambur (Apollo) and Dasha Smith (NFL) onto the Board of Trustees creates a governance dynamic where investment committee discussions are informed by practitioners managing large-scale institutional portfolios. This pattern mirrors how elite universities populate their investment committees, though Dalton's board is smaller and more directly tied to day-to-day school governance.

## Related profiles

- [Sunshine Charitable Foundation](https://altss.com/profile/sunshine-charitable-foundation)
- [The Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation](https://altss.com/profile/the-thomas-and-stacey-siebel-foundation)

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Last updated: 2026-08-11T02:43:31.692Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/the-dalton-school

Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology