Erlina Yeo Terwelp: From Banking to PE to Family Office to Columbia Endowment

Yeo Terwelp says higher interest rates change buyout math and make company growth and margin expansion more important, especially for firms with demonstrated operating value creation. She also cautions that buy-and-build strategies are difficult to execute: successful integration can create exceptional results, but claims of success warrant follow-up questions.

At Columbia, Terwelp's generalist role spanned hedge funds, long-only strategies, private equity, and niche strategies. She says evaluating managers required assessing their edge, positioning, leadership, and execution, while building LP and GP networks was a distinct learning curve after direct investing.

Terwelp says Columbia assessed risk dynamically, using data to evaluate exposures such as equity beta alongside liquidity, cost, and leverage rather than filling preset categories. That discipline sat alongside attention to liquidity as the endowment continued growing its private portfolio, even though public markets had outperformed private markets.

Terwelp describes a trade-off between broad and specialized investing: a generalist perspective helps compare industries and asset classes and recognize when an asset class may not fit, while specialist investing made her more attentive to portfolio construction, tilts, and areas to add. Columbia's senior team later divided responsibility between private and public investments as it addressed diversification needs, including relatively low venture exposure compared with peers.