Harvard Management Company’s Director of Private Equity Peter F. Dolan ’83 left HMC on Wednesday after nearly 20 years with the firm, according to a University official familiar with the matter.

John M. Shue ’91 will serve as interim head of HMC’s private equity and venture capital portfolio, according to the official, who declined to elaborate further because of a policy prohibiting public comment on personnel matters. Shue was previously a senior vice president in HMC’s private equity group and responsible for private equity in emerging markets.

Dolan’s departure comes as HMC, which manages Harvard’s $30 billion endowment, has made up around half of the $11 billion that the endowment lost during the recession. In the 2012 fiscal year, which ended last June 30, HMC’s private equity holdings gained 2 percent, according to the University’s annual financial report. For Dolan’s time at HMC, which began in 1995, that figure represented diminutive gains compared to a fiscal year 2012 benchmark of 4 percent and an average annual return on private equity of 20 percent over the last 20 years.

Private equity has played a significant role in Harvard’s endowment during Dolan’s tenure, representing its second-largest asset class at around $7 billion last fiscal year.

Since the recession and the arrival of HMC CEO and President Jane L. Mendillo in 2008, the firm sought to deal with the volatility of the financial crisis by unloading HMC’s particularly illiquid assets, including private equity, in favor of real assets such as natural resources.

Prior to joining HMC, Dolan worked for consulting firm Cambridge Associates and Liberty Mutual Insurance.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at syweinstock@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @syweinstock.