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Trimming the Fat While Sniffing for Truffles

Philip Walton, Celia Dallas, Theresa Sorrentino Hajer, Keirsten Lawton

Late-stage investing is challenging. As central banks around the globe have generally been in easing mode, valuations for bonds and risk assets have appreciated, leaving very little value and some pockets of froth. Ultra-low yields have pushed investors into increasingly risky assets—from high yield bonds to venture capital—in search of attractive returns.

In this webinar, Philip Walton, Head of Private Client Private Practice, interviews Celia Dallas, Chief Investment Strategist, Keirsten Lawton, Managing Director and Theresa Sorrentino Hajer, Managing Director to learn their perspectives on opportunities and challenges as the investment cycle matures.

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Recorded July 8, 2015

 

About Our Experts

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Philip Walton

Head of Private Client Practice

Philip is Head of Private Clients and Managing Director at Cambridge Associates. Philip joined the firm in 1999 and has served a variety of private clients and institutional investors ranging in size from several hundred million to multi-billion dollars in assets. He constructs and oversees investment portfolios, advising on investment policy, asset allocation, manager selection, and monitoring. In addition, he has specialized expertise building private investment portfolios, which include private equity, natural resources, and real estate. He also established the firm’s Single Investor Fund (SIF) service; SIFs provide a series of administrative services to enable certain clients to effectively build complex alternative asset portfolios. Philip has shared his expertise as a speaker at both client and industry conferences.Before Philip joined Cambridge Associates, he was an investment banking associate at Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette, including experience with their private fund group. He also served as vice president of Goodale Associates, a fund-raising consulting firm, managing the firm’s day-to-day activities for several clients’ fund-raising efforts.

Education and Professional Credentials

  • MBA, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College
  • BA, Williams College

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Celia Dallas

Chief Investment Strategist

As Chief Investment Strategist for Cambridge Associates and a Managing Director of the firm, Celia is responsible for formulating our global investment strategy and portfolio construction advice. Since joining Cambridge in 1996, Celia has contributed to a wide range of research initiatives, including serving as one of the main architects of our Risk Allocation Framework and an author of the related report. She is a regular contributor to our research publications, covering a wide range of capital market, asset allocation, and investment planning topics.Before joining Cambridge Associates, Celia was a consultant for Harlan Brown & Co, a competitive intelligence consulting firm. In this position, she researched, wrote, and presented market analysis commissioned by Fortune 500 clients on a variety of consumer and industrial products. She also worked for the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), where she conducted research and wrote reports on retirement income security issues.

Education and Professional Credentials

  • MBA, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
  • BA, University of Pennsylvania

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Theresa Sorrentino Hajer

Managing Director

Theresa is a Managing Director at Cambridge Associates in the Boston office. She co-leads the venture capital research team and is responsible for tracking the industry, identifying and conducting primary research on high-quality investment firms, monitoring firms in which clients are invested, and acting as a resource for the firm’s investment consultants.Before re-joining Cambridge Associates in 2003, Theresa was a summer associate in the Sales & Marketing Department, Investment Products Division of the Hartford Financial Services Group. Before that, she was a senior consulting associate at Cambridge Associates for three years, working on client portfolios and special projects focused on tracking client asset allocation and analyzing style bias. She started her career at Coopers & Lybrand where she was an associate auditor.

Education and Professional Credentials

  • MBA, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
  • BA, economics, Tufts University

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Keirsten Lawton

Managing Director

Keirsten is a Managing Director at Cambridge Associates in the Boston office. She co-leads the firm’s North American private equity research team, which performs due diligence on investment opportunities in private equity, credit, and distressed markets. Her responsibilities include identifying, diligencing, and monitoring investment firms and their portfolio companies. Additionally, Keirsten is responsible for analyzing market conditions, tracking the industry, and speaks on these topics at industry conferences. Keirsten and her team advise the firm’s investment consultants on manager and fund selection within the North American private equity universe. Keirsten is a member of the Private Growth Research Committee and Credit Committee at CA.Following are highlights from Keirsten’s recent work:

  • Conducted in-depth research on the universe of managers investing in distressed assets and presented her findings to the firm’s investment consultants.
  • Presented at the Association for Corporate Growth on the outlook for limited partners.

Before joining Cambridge Associates in 2008, Keirsten was an investment banker with Lehman Brothers’ Technology Group in Menlo Park, California and Communications and Media Group in New York. Previously, she worked at Shott Capital Management, an investment management firm focused on emerging small capitalization technology and healthcare companies and private equity fund investing. She also was an analyst with the then $27 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board. She began her career at Dartmouth College where she helped manage the endowment and was a member of the Council on Investor Responsibility.

Education and Professional Credentials

  • CFA Charterholder
  • MBA, Sloan School of Business, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • BA, economics, Dartmouth College

Community Involvement

  • Endowment Committee Member, Newton Highlands (Mass.) Congregational Church