Yale School of Management - Dean Takahashi '83

"I was drawn to Yale SOM’s strengths in educating and developing leaders to serve in the public and nonprofit sectors. That focus and interdisciplinary training has been instrumental in my work at the Yale Investments Office where strong investment performance and innovation has helped the University pursue its educational and research mission. In addition to my investment work, I am fortunate to be able to teach Yale students in the College and the School of Management who are aspiring to build careers in investments and endowment management."

Dean Takahashi is senior director of investments and lecturer in economics for Yale University, where he helps oversee more than $17 billion of the University’s endowment, pension, and charitable trust assets. Prior to joining the Yale Investments Office in 1986, he worked at Affirmative Investments in Boston and as a VISTA volunteer in Vermont. In 2009, Dean took a two-month leave from Yale to serve as a consultant to the Office of Domestic Finance in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he focused on the impact of the financial crisis on municipal finance and policy issues regarding the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Dean is an investment committee member for the Kresge Foundation, Save the Children, Choate Rosemary Hall and the Foote School. Dean was formerly a board member of Foote, Choate, 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.