Faculty Member’s Indirect Path to Pension Fund Investing and Governance
Tiffany Reeves is a member of the Board Smart Faculty. She recently wrote a popular Talk, entitled “Governance Policies.” Her Talk was also featured in Pensions & Investments. In her “day job,” Tiffany is a shareholder with Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c. (Reinhart Law) in the Employee Benefits and Institutional Investor Services practices. Her practice focuses on assisting institutional investors in private market investment transactions and advising public pension boards and executives regarding fiduciary, governance, and administrative matters.
Tiffany’s path to working with pension funds, however, wasn’t a straight one. After growing up and going to school in Eugene, OR, Tiffany sought a more culturally diverse place to begin her career after graduating from law school. She landed in Houston, TX. “Houston was not my speed, and my first job was as a staff attorney working on mass litigation projects doing document review,” she said. This experience left her wondering if she wanted to be a lawyer at all, and she decided to try something new.
A Different Direction
Tiffany, a former athlete, went to Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, to pursue a Masters in Sports Administration and became interested in labor issues. She joined a labor and employment firm with a robust employee benefits practice and met one of her first great mentors. He guided her toward investment and other transactional work, and she gravitated toward that work and found she was good at it. “Throughout my career my strategy has been to find the smartest people in the room and listen to them,” she said. “I think feedback is a gift; I’m open to rethinking past assumptions and constantly working to refine my craft.”
One of Tiffany’s clients was the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund (CTPF). She developed a close working relationship with the organization, and when the Chief Legal Counsel position opened, she became the youngest to ever hold the job. “I was very young, about 34, but I learned and rose to the challenge,” Tiffany said. She was later promoted to Deputy Executive Director, where all the functional units of the pension fund reported to her. She also worked closely with the Board of Trustees and focused on broader strategy issues.
The Importance of Learning What You’re Good At and What You’re Not
Again, she had a great mentor at CTPF who enabled her to focus internally, develop her skills, and direct her time toward investments. “One thing this experience taught me was that I didn’t want to be an Executive Director of a pension fund. My mentor was great at finessing the politics. That’s not my strong suit. I’m more of a linear thinker and am good at strategy, execution, and project management. Solving complex problems is my superpower; politics is not.” Tiffany began to consider other options.
“I’m aimlessly ambitious; I don’t have a particular destination in mind,” she said. “I like to look for the next challenge, refine my skills, explore ways to push myself, learn new things, and grow and advance in my career. I didn’t see a clear next step for myself in-house at a pension fund.”
Find Another Mentor, Better Yet a Sponsor
Enter Keith Johnson, head of Reinhart Law’s Institutional Investor Legal Services team. Tiffany saw in Keith someone she could learn from, and he was generous with his time and knowledge and continuously offered challenges and new directions. Tiffany explained, “There’s a difference between mentors and sponsors. As a person of color, having sponsors is particularly important. A sponsor is a person who takes the time to help develop and refine talent and broker professional opportunities even if it doesn’t provide a personal benefit to the sponsor. Keith invested in my career by sharing his wisdom and perspective, giving me candid feedback, advice, and opportunities to speak at conferences, participate in working groups, and publish with him; he gave me opportunities to be in rooms that I might not have otherwise been invited to join.”
Keith also introduced Tiffany to Funston Advisory Services and Board Smart where she had a chance to dig into governance issues. Working with Funston has enabled Tiffany to refine her perspective, connect concepts, and think more broadly and strategically. “I’m used to looking at issues from a legal perspective, which is risk-centric,” she said. “Board Smart takes a pragmatic, strategic, holistic approach to giving advice. Instead of a focus on just the legal/risk mitigation aspect, we look at governance from a broader organizational resilience perspective.”
Tiffany now lives in Minneapolis, MN, with her husband and two children. She’s working on two new Board Smart Talks on DC Plans and Oversight and Co-Fiduciary Liability, scheduled for release in 2022.