How do lay trustees vet investment managers? Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund trustee Vicki Kurzydlo on manager pitches, private equity, and labor principles.

Angelo talks with Vicki, a teacher trustee at the $14 billion Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund, about serving as a lay fiduciary rather than an investment professional. She walks through how managers should pitch to trustees, how fees get negotiated, and how managers get terminated. She also explains the fund's decision to back away from Verus after its acquisition by Cerity Partners — a reversal she attributes to incomplete disclosure about Cerity's influence, not just its private equity ownership.

She also discusses the CTU House of Delegates resolution that directly cited CTPF's private equity holdings, the labor principles the board is finalizing in response, and hard lines like no investment tied to child labor and a push for union-neutrality agreements from portfolio companies. She ties this to the fund's existing fossil fuel divestment, raises concerns about AI-driven job displacement, and closes on why she sees educating members about the pension fund as core to the job.

Vicki Kurzydlo is the Recording Secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union and a Teacher Trustee of the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund. A lifelong Chicagoan and longtime CPS educator, she brings more than 30 years of experience in public education, union leadership, and advocacy for students, educators, and working people. She began as an elementary school librarian at Holden Elementary and spent more than two decades as a special education teacher at Sauganash Elementary. As a trustee, she believes pension investment decisions must recognize that CTPF is a labor fund.

In This Episode:
(00:00) Introduction of CTPF teacher trustee Vicki Kurzydlo and Chicago warm-up

(03:38) Lay trustees as fiduciaries on a 12-member pension board

(05:08) How managers should pitch non-expert trustees and earn trust

(10:35) Fee negotiations, manager terminations, and getting a first look

(15:57) The consultant's role and members' push for less private equity

(20:27) Why CTPF walked away from Verus after the Cerity merger

(21:26) Pro-labor lines: child labor, union neutrality, and moral compass

(25:41) The CTU resolution every prospective manager should know

(28:17) Climate concerns and the fund's long-running fossil fuel divestment

(30:06) AI investments, worker displacement, and the BP Whiting example

(37:33) Demystifying the pension fund and how Vicki became trustee

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Dr. Angelo Calvello is a serial innovator and co-founder of multiple investment firms, including Rosetta Analytics and Blue Diamond Asset Management. He leverages his extensive professional network and reputation for authentic thought leadership to curate conversations with genuinely innovative allocators and thinkers.

As the "Dissident" columnist for Institutional Investor and former "Doctor Is In" columnist for Chief Investment Officer (winner of the 2016 Jesse H. Neal Award), Calvello has become a leading voice challenging conventional investment wisdom.

Beyond his professional pursuits, Calvello serves as Chairman of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System's Climate Advisory Panel, Chairman of the Board of Outreach with Lacrosse and Schools (OWLS Lacrosse), a nonprofit organization creating opportunities for at-risk youths in Chicago, and trustee for a Chicago-area police pension fund. His career-long focus on leveraging innovation to deliver superior client outcomes makes him the ideal host for cutting-edge institutional investing conversations.

Resources:

Vicki Kurzydlo, CTU officer bio:

Could your portfolio be over-diversified and under-diversified at the very same time?

Liquid alternatives, operational due diligence, and emerging managers: Dr. Ranjan Bhaduri, PhD, of Bodhi Research Group sits down with Angelo Calvello. Join us for a sharp, candid conversation about the evolution of liquid alternatives, the rise of transparency and governance after Madoff and the financial crisis, and why some strategies survived while others quietly disappeared. If you allocate to hedge funds, manage institutional capital, or build absolute-return portfolios, this episode addresses the challenges you face right now.

Ranjan discusses how liquid alts evolved from the pre-GFC era of a handful of dominant managers into a far more scrutinized market. He explains why the financial crisis created lasting demand for liquidity, transparency, managed accounts, and operational due diligence. He also explores which strategies gained ground and which lost relevance, including managed futures, insurance-linked securities, and convertible and merger arbitrage being absorbed into multi-strategy funds.

The conversation also explores how allocators are thinking about emerging managers, portfolio construction, and total portfolio alignment. Ranjan offers practical guidance on manager selection, including how to evaluate culture, research processes, governance, and fraud risk. He emphasizes that a strong track record is never enough if the underlying business is weak, and that operational due diligence should be a central part of the investment process rather than a checkbox.

The episode also turns to AI and the future of manager research and Total Portfolio Approach (TPA). This is essential listening for anyone seeking a clearer view of the evolution of liquid alts, the weaknesses in many portfolios, and how sophisticated allocators are approaching manager research, portfolio construction, and due diligence.

Dr. Ranjan Bhaduri, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of Bodhi Research Group, an independent, conflict-free firm dedicated to research and education in alternative investments. Under his leadership, Bodhi has served clients on five continents. His expertise spans hedge fund research, hedge fund factorization, portfolio management, and investment, operational, and structural due diligence. He previously served on an Investment Committee at Morgan Stanley and worked with two major Canadian investment banks. A CFA and CAIA charterholder, he has served on the AIMA Canada board and co-chaired its Managed Futures Committee.

In This Episode:
(00:00) Opening highlights and introduction of Dr. Ranjan Bhaduri, Bodhi Research Group
(04:11) How liquid alts evolved from early trend followers to today
(06:48) The GFC and Madoff spark demand for transparency and governance
(13:22) Which hedge fund strategies survived, and why managed futures stalled
(16:56) AI black box hypothetical and the hidden costs of swaps
(22:03) Why allocators are over-diversified and under-diversified at once
(30:26) AI, behavioral cues, and trust in operational due diligence
(38:34) Total Portfolio Approach: governance, culture, and Canadian pension leaders
(40:53) Worst pitch stories: locked doors and managers who turned fraudulent

Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who might be interested, and please take time to leave us a review!

Dr. Angelo Calvello is a serial innovator and co-founder of multiple investment firms, including Rosetta Analytics and Blue Diamond Asset Management. He leverages his extensive professional network and reputation for authentic thought leadership to curate conversations with genuinely innovative allocators and thinkers.

As the "Dissident" columnist for Institutional Investor and former "Doctor Is In" columnist for Chief Investment Officer (winner of the 2016 Jesse H. Neal Award),...

Is "we have an AI strategy" the emptiest sentence in institutional investing right now?

On Against Consensus, host Angelo Calvello and PSPRS CIO Mark Steed return for a candid AI progress check. Steed grades himself at ~25% toward his original efficiency and decision-making goals. The OpenAI/Hugging Face incident and new value-misalignment research have made him warier of managers pushing agentic systems, and interpretability remains a hard blocker for a fiduciary. He leans on Bertrand Russell's inductivist-turkey story to explain why high confidence in AI can still fail when regimes shift, cites a KPMG stat on managers already running agents in production, and offers his best line yet: "bet on the filing clerk instead of the PM.

Mark Steed is Chief Investment Officer of PSPRS, the pension fund protecting the retirement security of Arizona's first responders. He has built and overseen portfolios across private equity, venture capital, real estate, public equity, absolute return, opportunistic credit, and global trading strategies. Institutional Investor and CIO Magazine have named him CIO of the Year, Asset Allocator of the Year, Innovator of the Year, and Rising Star. For four years, Mark served as a forecaster in Dr. Phil Tetlock's Good Judgment Project, shaping how he thinks about risk, decision-making under uncertainty.

In This Episode:
(00:00) Rapid-fire warm-up: data versus gut, speed, and beard maintenance
(04:14) One-year AI progress check: roughly 25% toward original two goals
(08:19) Build versus buy debate and outsourcing the data room problem
(11:24) Ahead or behind peers: cloud enterprise versus workflow-first strategy
(16:25) Agentic systems already in use, from inbox rules to briefings
(18:01) OpenAI/Hugging Face incident and the risk of agentic misalignment
(23:43) KPMG stat and tougher due diligence on managers using agents
(27:26) Fiduciary pushback, interpretability, and Bertrand Russell's inductivist turkey
(32:01) Future AI stack, advice for new CIOs, and closing thoughts

Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who might be interested, and please take time to leave us a review!

Dr. Angelo Calvello is a serial innovator and co-founder of multiple investment firms, including Rosetta Analytics and Blue Diamond Asset Management. He leverages his extensive professional network and reputation for authentic thought leadership to curate conversations with genuinely innovative allocators and thinkers.

As the "Dissident" columnist for Institutional Investor and former "Doctor Is In" columnist for Chief Investment Officer (winner of the 2016 Jesse H. Neal Award), Calvello has become a leading voice challenging conventional investment wisdom.

Beyond his professional pursuits, Calvello serves as Chairman of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System's Climate Advisory Panel, Chairman of the Board of Outreach with Lacrosse and Schools (OWLS Lacrosse), a nonprofit organization creating opportunities for at-risk youths in Chicago, and trustee for a Chicago-area police pension fund. His career-long focus on leveraging innovation to deliver superior client outcomes makes him the ideal host for cutting-edge institutional investing conversations.

Resources:
Produced by Castos Productions
Mark Steed's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-steed/
First episode with Mark (EP 2, prior Institutional Edge branding): https://youtu.be/ah8lN1TehTI?si=OePPtmoy5mjggVnD
KPMG AI Pulse Survey (cited stat — confirm Q1 vs Q2, see flag above):