Dean Takahashi is senior director of investments for Yale University, where he helps oversee more than $23 billion of the University’s endowment, pension, and charitable trust assets. Since 1986, Dean has been responsible for Yale’s domestic, foreign, and private equity portfolios; absolute return strategies, natural resource investments, and analysis regarding asset allocation and spending policy. Prior to Yale, he worked as an investment officer at Affirmative Investments in Boston and as a VISTA volunteer in Vermont.

Dean is a trustee of Choate Rosemary Hall, and investment committee member for the Kresge Foundation, Save the Children, and the Foote School. Dean was formerly a board member of several other nonprofit organizations, two NYSE-listed companies, and an advisory board member of numerous private equity and alternative investment funds.

Dean received his BA magna cum laude with distinction in economics in 1980 from Yale University and a master’s degree in public and private management (MPPM) in 1983 from the Yale School of Management, where he is a lecturer in economics and a fellow of the International Center for Finance. Dean teaches a senior economics seminar in Yale College and a course on endowment management at Yale SOM. Dean is a contributing author to Managing Investment Portfolios: a Dynamic Process (3rd edition), a CFA Program curriculum textbook.

Dean’s wife, Wendy Sharp, teaches violin and oversees chamber music at Yale. They have two children, Kerry and Kai.