David F. Swenson

David Frederick Swensen was an American investor, endowment fund manager, and philanthropist. He was the chief investment officer at Yale University from 1985 until his death in May 2021.

Swensen was responsible for managing and investing Yale's endowment assets and investment funds, which totaled $25.4 billion as of September 2016. As of September 2019 the total amount is $30.3 billion. He was considered to be the highest-paid employee in Yale, leading a team of about 30 employees. He invented The Yale Model with Dean Takahashi, an application of the modern portfolio theory commonly known in the investing world as the "Endowment Model." His investing philosophy has been dubbed the "Swensen Approach" and is unique in that it stresses allocation of capital in Treasury inflation protection securities, government bonds, real estate funds, emerging market stocks, domestic stocks, and developing world international equities.

David Frederick Swensen was born in Ames, Iowa, on January 26, 1954, and was raised in River Falls, Wisconsin. His father, Richard David "Dick" Swensen, was a chemistry professor and dean at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. His mother, Grace Marie (Hartman), after raising six children, became a Lutheran minister. After graduating from River Falls High School in 1971 Swensen elected to stay in his hometown of River Falls and receive his B.A. and B.S. in 1975 from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls where his father Richard Swensen was a professor. Swensen pursued a PhD in economics at Yale, where he wrote his dissertation, A Model for the Valuation of Corporate Bonds. One of Swensen's dissertation advisers at Yale was James Tobin, a top economic adviser to John F. Kennedy administration and a future Nobel Prize laureate in economics. According to Charles Ellis, founder of Greenwich Associates and former chair of Yale's investment committee, "When it snowed, David went to Jim's house to shovel the sidewalk". James Tobin's Nobel Prize, among other things, was for his contribution in creation of Modern Portfolio Theory. Swensen was fascinated by the idea of Modern Portfolio Theory. During his 2018 reunion speech Swensen said: "For a given level of return, if you diversify you can get that return at lower risk. For a given level of risk, if you diversify you can get a higher return. That's pretty cool! Free lunch!"

Swensen lived in Killingworth, Connecticut. Some Yale alumni had mounted a campaign to name one of two new residential colleges after Swensen; the two residential colleges were ultimately named after Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray.

Swensen taught endowment management at Yale College and at the Yale School of Management. He was a fellow of Berkeley College and an incorporator of the Elizabethan Club.

Swensen died from kidney cancer at Yale New Haven Hospital on May 5, 2021, aged 67.