The Andrew Carnegie Foundation: New Name, (Mostly) Same Portfolio

This week, we’re taking a look at the portfolio of the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, a $4.8 billion foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. The industrialist and steel magnate of the late 1800’s sold Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $303 million (equivalent to more than $10 billion today). He popularized the idea of giving away the majority of his fortune while living in his famous essay The Gospel of Wealth, something Warren Buffett and other contemporary billionaires have continued with the Giving Pledge.

We have previously covered the foundation, which announced its name change from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in June, in November of 2024.

The foundation is led by CIO Jon-Michael Consalvo, who first joined as a managing director in 2009. Consalvo was promoted to CIO in 2024 following the departure of former CIO Mark Baumgartner after three years in the role when he stepped down to become the CIO of the Dalio Family Office, the investment office of Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. After a little over a year with Dalio, Baumgartner is now the CIO at the University of Florida Investment Corporation.

The biggest changes in Carnegie’s asset allocation over the past few years have been an increase in what it calls “index plus,” a decrease in its public equity overlay by nearly 80%, and a ~30% reduction in natural resources.

The Carnegie Foundation also publishes its annual returns, a move uncommon amongst its foundation peers. The Foundation has outperformed its policy benchmark annually and over its annualized 3-, 5-, and 10-year return periods:

In Friday’s newsletter, users received a list of the Carnegie Foundation’s public and private manager rosters and a list of its newest manager relationships. The Foundation’s largest disclosed manager holding is with Alyeska, a Chicago-based long/short equity manager. It was founded in 2008 by Anand Parekh, a former Citadel portfolio manager who launched his firm with backing from Citadel founder Ken Griffin.

Parekh graduated from the University of Michigan with his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and English literature before entering the investment industry in various roles at Deutsche Bank. At Citadel, he built and ran its global equities and reinsurance group before leaving to start Alyeska.

Carnegie first disclosed an investment in Alyeska in 2023, and its holding with the manager has grown from $137 million to $185 million over the past two years.

Alongside the Carnegie Foundation, disclosed LPs of Alyeska include AB Multi-Manager Alternative, Bank of America Pension, Hackensack Meridian Health, Heinz Family Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, Kaiser Permanente, Nokia, and the Texas Municipal Retirement System (TMRS).

Using public disclosures from TMRS, we can see that as of 6/30/26, it had invested $115 million in Alyeska’s fund, received $35 million back, and that the current value of its remaining holdings was $316.5 million. According to TMRS, the fund has so far generated a time-weighted return of roughly 12%.

A number of former Alyeska team members have gone on to start their own firms later in their careers:

One other fun note – former Alyeska analyst Vishnu Srinivasan is now the CIO of The Ohio State University’s endowment.

These are just a few examples of how users can use OWL’s people data search and employee change feed to identify and connect with spinouts from successful managers before anyone else knows about them.

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.