Until Feb. 1, 2023, we were Group Health Foundation. This post was written under our former identity. To learn more about our new name, read our announcement HERE.
Wang Will Lead GHF’s Inatai Investment Management Company
SEATTLE – Peng Wang, a leader with 18 years of investment experience, is Group Health Foundation’s next chief investment officer. Wang was previously the foundation’s managing director of investments and has been serving as CIO since March 2022, when former CIO Muthu Muthiah departed the foundation for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
“Peng has done an exceptional job of instilling our core values into our work and ensuring that equity and racial justice are embedded in our culture and always a factor in our investment strategy,” said Nichole June Maher, GHF president and CEO. “I am incredibly appreciative of Peng’s leadership as our interim CIO and even more excited for the leadership he will provide going forward.”
Wang joined GHF in 2019 and has been a key leader in building the investment office, which manages the foundation’s $2 billion in assets and oversees the strategic deployment of financial resources in service of the foundation’s mission and values. He also helped recruit and retain a talented investment team, who are majority women and people of color.
More recently, Wang and the investment team worked with GHF’s board to form the Inatai Investment Management Company. In addition to managing all GHF assets, the company plans to offer management services to other organizations using a cost-sharing model, a move that will allow smaller nonprofits and foundations to access high-quality investments at cost. A board of experts — who are also majority women and people of color — from the Pacific Northwest governs the company, which Wang will helm CIO.
“The CIO role is an opportunity not only to manage but to lead,” Wang said. “I am dedicated to growing our capital through investment, while continuing to support our high-caliber team and attract diverse talent that has traditionally been underrepresented across the world of investment.”
The foundation’s search committee partnered with Protégé, a Black-owned executive recruiting firm based in Washington, D.C. Protégé’s racially diverse team works across the United States and has led several successful searches in the greater Seattle area and for foundations nationwide.
“Our committee conducted an extensive national search,” said Peter van Oppen, a member of both the GHF and Inatai boards. “We had a phenomenal pool of candidates with deep experience and values alignment. As the process unfolded it became increasingly clear that Peng’s leadership was the right choice for our organization and our long-term investment aspirations. Our support for him was unanimous.”
Wang will officially step into the CIO role Dec. 1. Previously, he was the head of portfolio research for TIAA Endowments, a risk manager at the $7.5 billion University of Virginia Investment Management Company, and an analyst at Georgetown University’s $1.2 billion investment office. Wang has extensive expertise in asset allocation and risk management with several publications in industry journals, including the Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Private Equity, Journal of Wealth Management, and Financial Analyst Journal, which awarded him the Graham & Dodd Award of Excellence – Reader’s Choice for one of his publications. He was also listed as one of Chief Investment Officer’s “Forty Under Forty” in 2015 and one of Trusted Insight’s “Top Institutional Rising Stars” in 2020.
About Group Health Foundation
Group Health Foundation is a 501(c)(4) grantmaking organization serving Washington state. GHF works to transform the balance of power to ensure equity and racial justice across Washington and beyond. For more, visit www.inatai.org.
About Inatai Investment Management Company
Inatai is a wholly owned subsidiary of GHF. The company manages the assets of GHF and other mission-aligned foundations and endowments. Inatai aims to be a proactive, community-driven force for change in capital markets and the investment sector at large. Learn more: https://inatai.org/investment-management-co/
