Robert B. Litterman

Robert B. Litterman, PhD, was elected to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Board of Trustees in July 2013; prior to that he served as advisor to the Investment Committee of the Foundation’s Board since October 2009.

Robert, known as a groundbreaking figure in the field of risk management, serves as chairman of the Risk Committee of Kepos Capital, a globally focused asset management firm. He joined Kepos Capital in 2010.

Robert retired from Goldman Sachs & Co. on December 31, 2009, after a 23-year career in research, risk management, investments, and thought leadership roles. At retirement, he was chairman of the Quantitative Investment Strategies Group of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Prior to moving to the Investment Management Division, Robert was head of the firmwide risk department. Preceding his time in the Operations, Technology & Finance Division, he spent eight years in the Fixed Income Division Research Department, where he was co-director. While at Goldman Sachs, Robert spent six years as one of three external advisors to Singapore’s Government Investment Corporation. Robert joined Goldman Sachs in 1986 and became a partner of the firm in 1994.

Robert is credited with envisioning and leading the creation of Goldman’s first enterprise-wide, integrated risk management function and, during his tenure there, he researched and published a number of groundbreaking papers in asset allocation and risk management. He is the co-developer, along with the late Fischer Black, of the Black-Litterman Global Asset Allocation Model, a tool widely used in the investment management industry. He also has co-authored books including The Practice of Risk Management and Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Robert was an assistant vice president in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, as well as an assistant professor in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robert serves on a number of boards, including Commonfund, where he was elected chair in 2014; Options Clearing Corporation; Resources for the Future; and the Sloan Foundation.

Robert earned a PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota and a BS in human biology from Stanford University. He was inducted into Risk magazine’s Risk Management Hall of Fame and named the 2013 Risk Manager of the Year by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. In 2012, he was the inaugural recipient of the S. Donald Sussman Fellowship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In 2008, he received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award from the CFA Institute Board as well as the International Association of Financial Engineers/SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year Award.