My interest in investing started in college and graduate school. I had a background in math and economics, and investing felt like a natural way to apply those skills. After graduating, I started my career as a banker with JPMorgan Chase during the height of the Great Recession, which gave me a deeper understanding of the real-world impact of the economy and financial markets on families.

During that time, families were searching for advice and solutions. That experience led me to wealth management, where I could bring everything together. I still get to scratch the intellectual itch of investing while helping clients navigate financial markets.

Can you describe your role at Chevy Chase Trust and what your work involves day to day?

As a portfolio manager, I focus on making sure our thematic investing approach is implemented in client portfolios, with allocations that meet near-term needs while remaining anchored to each client’s long-term financial plan. We spend a lot of time meeting with clients throughout the year to update them on markets and how things are evolving toward their financial goals.

I’m also part of the research team, where I focus on companies in the utilities and power generation space, including nuclear and natural gas, as well as industrial companies that build transmission and distribution infrastructure. One great thing about the research team here is that we have broad latitude to investigate ideas, even if they are not aligned with a specific sector. Even though I cover utilities, if I see an opportunity associated with power demand in an energy company, I can look at that energy stock. I am not siloed within the utilities sector.

You have also been developing an alternative investments platform. Can you share more details?

We have been working on an alternative investments platform for our clients to access markets such as private equity, real estate and infrastructure. The approach you will see us taking is quite different from many of our competitors and wholly consistent with our longstanding focus on being a true fiduciary advisor to our clients.

Historically, private markets have, in some cases, generated returns above public markets, but we approach these asset classes with great caution for several reasons, some of which relate to the market as we see it today, and others that are more timeless aspects of these asset classes, when comparing them to the public equity and fixed income markets.

One of the bigger “timeless” differences between alternative investments and traditional public markets is liquidity – your ability to turn an investment into cash when you want. More often than you might think, family circumstances can change unexpectedly, leading to cases where a client needs to sell an investment to generate cash for needs ranging from the purchase of a home to large medical or long-term care expenses. In the public markets, you can sell a holding immediately. In private markets, it varies a lot, but in certain areas – for instance private equity – your money can be tied up for years.

Beyond that “timeless” aspect of private investments, we worry today about the amount of capital that has flowed into private equity over the past several years. More dollars are chasing a relatively finite number of opportunities, which often means forward-looking returns may be lower than they have been historically.

We believe it is important to think about alternative investments as a “portfolio construction” effort, not a series of one-off “trades” into interesting-looking fund offerings. Manager selection in this realm of investing is critical. That is why we believe it is important to have a platform where we can, as a fiduciary, help clients define the objectives for their alternative investments, evaluate opportunities, understand the trade-offs and access private markets in a thoughtful way that aligns with their broader financial plan.

In my career, I have seen that most asset and wealth managers invest for scale. They generally invest client assets in the same way. They also typically view investments through a style-box lens and, as a result, tend to be relatively constrained in how they implement their strategies. Over time, many have relied more heavily on passive investment vehicles.

That is not how we approach investing at Chevy Chase Trust. Through our research, we look for investment tailwinds, and we can achieve a high level of diversification with the number of stocks we own for clients. Our themes drive stock selection. We are not simply running valuation or growth screens to find ideas. Our ideas are generated organically by following the scent of a theme we have been investigating.

One of my colleagues, Bobby Eubank, once referred to the “primordial soup of idea generation” when asked how we parse so many potential investment options. It can seem daunting, but our research process casts a wide net and zooms in on what looks interesting. It is about being intellectually curious and asking: If this is the case, what does it mean for everything else?

Utilities are a good example from my research. Historically, they have not been very thematic. They are highly regulated, and for much of my career they were essentially a proxy for bonds, or a way to generate income reliably. But with AI proliferating across the economy and driving power demand, electric utilities are back on the front burner.

As we looked at what that power demand might mean, some utilities had capacity to take on new data centers within their service territories, whereas others did not. We thought there could be some opportunity there. Renewables have been a near-term answer, but data centers need reliable baseload power generation and renewables cannot provide that 24/7. So, we started asking what the long-term approach would be for meeting this power demand.

We believe nuclear is a viable solution, although there are hurdles to overcome. If nuclear is a solution 10 or 15 years from now, we then asked what could bridge that gap. For us, the answer was natural gas. We started looking at companies that could benefit from higher utilization of natural gas, and we ended up investing in a pipeline company that transports it. That is a good example of how our research process generates ideas organically and helps us identify a specific company we think is best positioned to benefit from the tailwinds we have identified.

Can you share an example of a theme that evolved in an unexpected way?

One example is our historically technology-oriented theme, which was previously called the Dawn of Heterogeneous Computing. The basic idea was that the industry was reaching the physical limits of how much computational power could come from stacking chips on top of each other. As a result, chips needed to become more application -specific.

That theme played out over several years, but it has taken on renewed relevance with the advent of AI. Heterogeneous computing is now helping enable AI, and the theme has evolved into what we call the Rise of Purpose-Built Technology.

But this theme which started primarily as a technology theme has now broadened into something that affects other sectors as well, including industrials, healthcare and even utilities. It is a good example of how a theme can remain relevant while evolving as the market and technology landscape change.

Important Disclosures