Managing Principal

Eric T. Johnson

With more than 25 years of experience in the boardrooms and investment committee meetings where institutional asset management and governance decisions are made, whether as a trustee and board president, an investment office staff member, or a managing director at one of the world's leading institutional investment consulting firms, Eric brings expertise in investment policy and governance, strategic asset allocation, private investments, and investment performance analysis.

Eric was previously a Managing Director at Cambridge Associates, where he advised trustees, investment committees, and internal staff at endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, healthcare organizations, pension funds, and other large institutional investors in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa. He assisted institutional asset owners with issues ranging from spending policy and asset allocation strategy to manager structure and selection, performance monitoring, investment policy, mission-related investing, and portfolio implementation. He has direct experience leading due diligence of private investment partnerships globally including venture capital, buyout, growth equity, impact investment funds, and funds of funds. He was a leader in developing and expanding Cambridge's emerging markets private equity and venture capital benchmarks, and co-created the firm's methodology for comparing private equity returns to public market returns — the Cambridge Associates Modified Public Market Equivalent (mPME) — which has become an industry standard.

Eric has worked directly as an Investment Director for Kamehameha Schools, whose multi-billion-dollar endowment supports the largest private school system in the United States, and most recently served as President of the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Endowment Fund, where he led board and committee meetings and oversaw all aspects of the endowment's long-term investment program.

He has authored white papers for the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) and contributed a chapter, "Private Investments: Shedding Some Light on the Historical Record," to the book Performance Measurement and Benchmarking in Private Equity (Private Equity International, 2011). He has been an invited speaker at institutional investment conferences and annual meetings across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

Eric began his investment career as a Vice President with Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, managing an emerging markets private equity fund backed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Earlier in his career he served on the National Security Council staff in the White House Situation Room and as an Analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense covering international security issues. Since 2022 he has been a member of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions (Yermak-McFaul Group), focused on potential sanctions related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Eric holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, a Master of Arts in Russian and East European Studies, and an MBA, all from Stanford University.