United Nations Appoints New Officer To Head Pension Investments

The United Nations has hired a new top investment officer to manage the investments of its $54 billion pension fund. The position — officially titled Representative of the Secretary-General for Investments — will be manned by Carol Boykin, who has worked on the investment staff of numerous public pension funds over the last two decades. From Ai-CIO:

As representative of the secretary-general for investments—a role created in March—Carol Boykin will be responsible for overall asset management strategy, policy, and oversight.

She has spent the last several years as president of Bolton Partners Investment Consulting, an independent Baltimore-based benefits practice.

Boykin served as CIO of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System from 1999 through 2003, before leaving abruptly. She had come to the then-$25.2 billion public fund from Lucent Technologies, where she spent two years as deputy CIO.

She began her career in 1995 at the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, where she spent three and half years as a securities investment officer.

The UN’s defined benefit fund has a highly complex governance structure and is entirely internally managed.

Carol Boykin’s biography from Bolton Partners’ website reads:

Ms. Boykin is a CFA charterholder, and she is a member of CFA Institute. She is a past president of the Baltimore CFA Society, and she currently serves on their Advisory Board. She holds a Master of Science in Finance from Loyola University Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Emory University.

According to Chief Investment Officer magazine, the United Nations was actively looking to hire a woman or minority to lead the pension fund’s investments.