Whitman College Endowment

Day-to-day financial oversight falls under Peter Harvey, the college's CFO and Vice President for Finance and Administration. The Investment Committee carries the ultimate fiduciary responsibility and includes current practitioners such as Michelle Mathieu, CEO and CIO of Fulcrum Capital, and Elizabeth Obershaw, a former Managing Director at Horsley Bridge Partners. Emeritus members have included Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global and Tim Barrows of Matrix Partners, giving the committee access to venture and public markets expertise.

Yes. The endowment holds a portfolio of directly owned farmland and rangeland in Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield, and Umatilla counties, including named properties like Braden Farm at Wallula Gap and Erickson Farm north of Walla Walla. These are not REIT interests or fund stakes — they are titled properties the college has held, in some cases, for generations. The endowment also stewards the Maxey Museum artifact collection.

Whitman College does not publicly report a single AUM figure in a readily accessible format. Based on the college's student body size, liberal arts peer comparisons, and its NACUBO reporting tier, Altss estimates the endowment in the $200 million to $500 million range. The range reflects observed staffing depth and the scale of its directly held real assets.

Whitman participates in the Intentional Endowments Network, which facilitates peer sharing on ESG integration, impact investing, and alignment with institutional mission. The college has engaged in campus and committee-level discussions on sustainable investing, though specific divestment mandates or dedicated impact allocations have not been publicly disclosed in detail.

The Whitman Investment Company (WIC) is a student-managed investment portfolio that operates as an experiential learning vehicle alongside the main endowment. Students gain direct exposure to security analysis and portfolio management under faculty and advisor supervision. WIC is a separate entity from the endowment's core investment committee and professionals.