Vermont Municipal Employees' Retirement System

All investment decisions for VMERS are made by the Vermont Pension Investment Commission. Eric Henry serves as CIO and runs day-to-day portfolio management. VPIC Chair Thomas Golonka leads the commission, and Deputy CIO Katie Green handles operational investment functions including representing the fund on the Council of Institutional Investors' U.S. Asset Owners Advisory Council. The commission oversees pooled assets for VMERS, the State Employees' Retirement System, and the State Teachers' Retirement System.

VMERS pools its investment management with the Vermont State Employees' Retirement System and the Vermont State Teachers' Retirement System under one centralized body — the Vermont Pension Investment Commission. This means VPIC's investment team, not separate plan-level staff, makes allocation, manager-selection, and monitoring decisions for all three funds. The structure concentrates roughly $6 billion in combined assets under a single governance framework, which creates efficiency but also consolidates fiduciary risk.

VMERS accesses private markets primarily through fund commitments and separate-account relationships rather than direct co-investments or SPVs. Confirmed fund commitments include Harrison Street Fund X, Blue Owl Capital Real Estate, UBS Trumbull Property Fund, Nuveen Global Farmland Fund, and Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund II. The fund has not publicly disclosed a direct-investment or co-investment program.

Beyond core commercial real estate through vehicles like UBS Trumbull, VMERS has committed to niche real assets including the Nuveen Global Farmland Fund and Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund II. These commitments suggest a deliberate allocation to farmland and food-and-agriculture technology strategies within the real assets bucket. Harrison Street Fund X adds exposure to mixed-use properties, rounding out a real-assets sleeve that spans traditional commercial, specialized sector, and natural-resource-oriented strategies.

VMERS participates in Climate Action 100+ and the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative indirectly — through its contracted asset management companies, not through direct signatory status. VPIC's manager-selection process incorporates climate risk as a factor, but the fund has not publicly committed to a formal divestment policy or a specific net-zero target for its directly managed assets. Deputy CIO Katie Green's involvement with the Council of Institutional Investors reflects the fund's broader governance engagement on ESG issues.

Private credit is a confirmed sleeve within VMERS' portfolio, though the fund does not break out its private-credit commitments at the manager level in publicly available materials. The allocation appears to run alongside the broader private-markets book — real estate, private equity, and real assets — consistent with the trend among public pension funds adding private credit as a yield-enhancing complement to fixed income. Specific GP relationships for the private-credit allocation have not been publicly identified.

VMERS discloses its portfolio holdings, asset allocation, and investment performance through annual reports, public board meetings, and filings consistent with Vermont's open-meeting and public-records laws. VPIC board meetings are open to the public and agendas and minutes are posted online. The fund provides defined-benefit plan actuarial valuations and funding-status updates through the Vermont State Treasurer's Office, though manager-level private-markets performance is typically reported with a lag and at an aggregated level to protect GP confidentiality.