Golub, who holds a bachelor's, an MBA and a law degree from Harvard, concurs. "There's got to be a bigger communication and political component of the role than there's been in the past," he says.

Unlike El-Erian, who appeared frequently in the media prognosticating about markets while at Harvard, Mendillo has kept a low profile.

"Jane's approach is more soft-spoken," says Richard Flannery, CEO of the Investment Fund for Foundations, whose board Mendillo chaired from 2006 to 2009. "People would judge that as a weakness at their peril."

Mendillo also used New York-based public relations firm Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc. as the fund faced questions from alumni and faculty.

Building Bridges

"She can build bridges and listen to lots of people," says Harry Hoffman, a former business school classmate of Mendillo's who now manages $7.5 billion in investments and pension assets at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "She's not the kind of person who feels she has to be noticed."

Mendillo didn't shun the limelight while growing up as the middle of five children in New Britain, Connecticut. Young Jane was a high school cheerleader who also played Beethoven and Chopin on the piano and performed in a production of South Pacific, says her mother, Love Mendillo, 79, a retired schoolteacher.

"She loved music and reading," her mother says. "Anything she could get her hands on, she read."

The third generation of her family to attend Yale, Mendillo majored in English literature. Her mother expected her to become a writer.

A summer job at Yale's investment office between her junior and senior years changed Mendillo's mind, her mother says. She spent two years working at the university's investment office before getting her MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Bloodcurdling Scream

First « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 » Next