Blyth, 46, joined the company in 2006 from Deutsche Bank AG and oversees public markets including much of the internal trading. Wiltshire, 57, is in charge of alternative assets such as private equity, real estate and natural resources. He was hired in 2001 and made $7.9 million in 2012, the top earner at Harvard Management.

An industry veteran who began her career at Yale, Mendillo sold stakes in private-equity funds and sought more direct control over investments and trading. She joined Harvard in 1987, rising up the ranks under CEO Jack Meyer, before leaving to manage Wellesley College’s money in 2002. She returned in 2008, succeeding Mohamed El-Erian, who had been hired to replace Meyer.

A sore spot in Harvard Management’s portfolio has been private equity, which accounted for about 16 percent of assets in 2013, up from about 11 percent in fiscal 2008. The endowment’s trailing 10-year annualized private-equity returns have worsened relative to benchmarks during that period, trailing its benchmark by almost 3 percentage points as of June 30, 2013. That compares with an outperformance of almost 17 percentage points for the portfolio’s 10-year returns as of 2008.

Emerging Markets

“I would characterize our private equity performance this year as fair,” Mendillo wrote in her 2013 annual letter. “While this asset class still presents unique opportunities for attractive returns, it has gotten much more crowded and there is less of an illiquidity premium. As a result, we are actively focused on honing our private equity strategy.”

Yale, the world’s second-wealthiest school with a $20.8 billion endowment, last year reduced what it expects to invest in private equity to 31 percent of the portfolio from 35 percent while defending the model that emphasizes alternative assets.

Mendillo stuck to her drive into emerging markets even as growth faltered. During her tenure, investments in emerging markets failed to beat benchmarks every year except 2009, when they outperformed by 370 basis points, according to Harvard Magazine. A basis point equals a hundredth of a percentage point.

Potential Successors

Harvard Management allocates 11 percent of its portfolio to emerging markets, higher than peers such as Yale. In 2012, when emerging-markets investments tumbled 17.4 percent, Mendillo wrote in the annual report that “emerging-markets investments are poised to benefit from the phenomenal rate of change in local, regional and global businesses worldwide and will be one of the key drivers of our portfolio’s future performance.”

Mendillo sought to make Harvard’s expertise in international markets a competitive advantage, touting direct investments in natural resources such as timberland in Brazil. Yet there were stumbles as seen earlier this year when the university said it would sell forest land in Romania amid a bribery scandal involving an agent it used.