From the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, Narvekar, 54, oversees a $9.6 billion fund and 21 employees. He is credited with helping turn around Columbia’s performance after being hired in 2002 from the University of Pennsylvania. Narvekar spent 14 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in equity derivatives before returning to Penn, where he got an MBA.

A graduate school with 175 students on Manhattan’s Upper East Side known for research in the biomedical sciences, chemistry and physics, Rockefeller University hired Falls, 52, as chief investment officer in 2011. She has degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard’s Kennedy School and worked in Morgan Stanley’s fixed-income department. In 2005, she founded an investment office for her alma mater Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

The pressure on Harvard to make changes may intensify next week when the university is expected to release its latest investment results. For the year ended June 30, the average endowment posted an almost 1 percent loss, the worst performance since 2009, according to the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Tumultuous Year

The CEO search caps a tumultuous time for Harvard Management Co., the arm of the university that manages the endowment from offices overlooking Boston Harbor.

In 2014, Jane Mendillo, who had previously managed Wellesley College’s endowment, departed Harvard after six years at the helm. She sold private equity investments at fire-sale prices after the 2008 financial crisis, and the endowment’s performance lagged during the recovery. Prior to Mendillo, former Pacific Investment Management Co. chief executive Mohamed El-Erian ran the endowment for less than two years, leaving in 2007.

For a quick look at endowments, click here

In the decade through June 2015, Harvard’s average annual return was 7.6 percent, compared with 10 percent at Yale and 10.1 percent at Columbia. During Fall’s five-year tenure at Rockefeller, her fund reported an annualized return of 10.7 percent, only narrowly edging out Harvard’s 10.5 percent.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Harvard posted stellar returns under then chief Jack Meyer, who left to run his own hedge-fund operation in Boston. Swensen and Meyer were considered pioneers in an approach now common for institutions: diversifying from plain-vanilla stocks and bonds to more exotic and assets such as private equity and hedge funds.

Tough Job