OVERVIEW
James is responsible for shaping the Maples Group's offerings and enhancing its service delivery to institutional investors including pensions, endowments, foundations, OCIOs and family offices. He brings more than 20 years of investment management experience, with 10 years serving in senior investment roles overseeing portfolios of public assets in California and Texas. In these roles, James played a pivotal role in the development of innovative industry solutions. He was a co-creator of the Strategic Relationship Agreement (SRA) structure which has been embraced by both top-tier managers and sophisticated investors and is now taught at Harvard Law School. Leveraging this experience as an innovative allocator, James is committed to helping improve the relationships, structures and deal flow between allocators and asset managers. James is a recognised thought leader in the investment industry, as evidenced through a number of awards, including being named as one of the Top 30 Pension Fund Chief Investment Officers (Trusted Insight, 2016) and receiving the Investor Intelligence Award for Innovation (Institutional Investor, 2014). He is also a regular advisor and speaker with TEXPERS and the Texas Alternative Investment Association (Previously the Texas Hedge Fund Association) and is a regular speaker at other industry conferences.
BACKGROUND
Previously, James served as Chief Investment Officer of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System where he oversaw all investments in the system’s portfolio. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Vice Chancellor and Assistant Chief Investment Officer for the Texas Tech University System, and was the Senior Investment Officer at San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association. James also served as a Naval Officer and Aviator in the US Navy.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Chartered Financial Analyst
Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
EDUCATION
National University, Master of Business Administration with Distinction, 1995.
University of Houston, Bachelor of Applied Science, Biochemical and Biophysical Science, 1986.
GET IN TOUCH
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KNOWLEDGE
- Long and Short of It: Hedge Funds Show Strong Risk-Adjusted Performance 31 August 2023
- SRA Platform Helps Pensions and Endowments Serve the Public Good 06 January 2022
- Funds for Families How Family Offices are Optimizing Investment Diversification 29 March 2021
- Pension Consolidation: Optimizing Scale and Maximizing Efficiency 25 January 2021
- Repack is Back: Issuances in 2020 25 August 2020
- Increased Demand for Third-Party Irish Management Company Services as Regulations Change 06 August 2020
- ESG Roundtable 08 May 2020
- Podcast: US Credit Market Update 28 April 2020
- Asian Markets Insight: Perspectives for US Institutional Investors 06 April 2020
- Institutional Investment Structures: Revisiting Managed Accounts and Funds-of-One 04 February 2020