" Over the last 56 years, I’ve spent a lot of time making suggestions to clients regarding their investment processes and portfolios, and I’ve been on the client side as a member of various investment committees. But seldom have I been able to bridge the two, serving as an active participant in clients’ investment processes. I had an opportunity to do just that the other day, when I met with the board and senior staff of a U.S. state pension fund. I was asked to listen in and provide feedback on the results of a board-member survey their consultant had recently conducted and would be reporting on during the meeting.

The content of the consultant’s session impressed me so much that I decided to write a memo about it. I’m not disclosing the names of the state and its consultant, for obvious reasons, but I’m very pleased that they agreed to let me use the content of the meeting as raw material for this memo.

In the meeting, the consultant covered many of the things I consider “the most important thing” and often came down on the same side I would (admittedly, that might’ve contributed to why I was so impressed!). I’m going to sum up below the consultant's assessment of the board survey and my reaction. My hope is that this is as informative for you as it was for me."

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