Charles D. Ellis, YC '59
Director & Former Managing Partner
Greenwich Associates
Consultant in Investing

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Charles D. Ellis serves as a consultant to large institutional investors and wealthy families and as managing partner of a pro bono partnership of nearly 100 Harvard Business School classmates and friends, Applecore Partners, which commits time and treasure in support of entrepreneurial, change-oriented ventures in education, particularly those focused on children born into tough circumstances.

Charley’s professional career has centered on serving Greenwich Associates, the international strategy consulting firm he founded in 1972. Recognized worldwide for the proprietary research that informs its consulting, the firm grew in the 30 years during which he was managing partner to serve the leading firms in more than 130 professional financial markets around the world. He is now a director of the firm.

Services to the investment profession include chair and two terms as governor of the profession’s CFA Institute and an associate editor of both The Journal of Portfolio Management and The Financial Analysts Journal. He is one of 10 individuals honored for lifetime contributions to the investment profession.

Academic activities include two appointments (in 1970 and 1974) to the faculty of the Harvard Business School and one (in 1986) to the Yale School of Management, both to teach the advanced course on investment management. He has also served for 20 years on the faculty of the Investment Workshop at Princeton.

He serves as chairman of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and as a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has previously served as a successor trustee of Yale and chaired the university's investment committee as a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and Eagle Hill School, and as an overseer of the Stern School of Business at New York University. He has also served on the visiting committee and as a member of the board of directors of the Associates of the Harvard Business School.

The author of 14 books, including The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs (Penguin), Joe Wilson (John Wiley & Sons), CAPITAL (John Wiley & Sons), and Winning the Loser’s Game (McGraw-Hill), Charley has written nearly 100 articles for business and professional journals. His article, "The Loser’s Game," won the investment profession’s Graham & Dodd Award in 1977.

A graduate of Exeter and Yale College, Charley earned an MBA (with distinction) at Harvard Business School and a PhD at New York University. He is married to his best friend, Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale University. Their four children are Harold, Chad, Kelly, and Peter.