Richard L. Hall ’90, who attended Harvard on a scholarship from the Navy and is now the head of private equity at HMC, said that helping to offer the next generation of students the opportunity to attend Harvard played an important role in his decision to join the company in April.

“I know that the endowment provides a lot of the resources needed to give financial aid and scholarships. To me that’s important,”  Hall said. “It’s personally motivating.”

He said that this social value is not something he saw in his work in the private sector. Hall worked in investment banking before serving as the managing director and head of private equity for the Teaching Retirement System of Texas, the pension fund for public school employees in Texas before he came to HMC.

“Investment banking can be very a good and rewarding career, but I didn’t find the same kind of level of psychological gratification,” Hall said. “There definitely wasn’t a feeling that I was serving something or somebody that made an impact in the world.”

Blyth also stressed this idea of impact, writing in an emailed statement: “Everyone who works here understands the impact the endowment returns have on the University’s operations. That’s a unique and powerful motivating factor that permeates the whole company.”

And with an endowment so big—a one percent change in annual returns represents $364 million—HMC is not at a loss for impact.