Data Readiness: The Critical First Step for AI Adoption at Makena Capital

Breanna Genecov and Kunal Koppula of Makena Capital Management discuss how the firm is rebuilding its data architecture as a prerequisite to AI integration. They detail the transition from fragmented, Excel-dependent workflows to a unified, cloud-based data stack, and explain why institutional investors who skip this foundation will struggle to extract reliable value from AI. Practical guidance on change management, leadership buy-in, and phased execution makes this essential listening for LPs & allocators at the early stages of their own transformation.

Makena Capital Management is nearly two decades into its institutional investing history and one year into a deliberate, firmwide data transformation. In this episode, Breanna Genecov (Portfolio Solutions & OCIO) and Kunal Koppula (Data Engineering) explain the technical shift from managing "Keyman risk" in isolated Excel files to building a unified cloud infrastructure. They discuss the practicalities of porting tools into a modern data stack, the necessity of firm-wide upskilling, and the phased roadmap from structured data consolidation toward AI-enabled unstructured data analysis.

The conversation cuts through AI noise: before any meaningful automation or intelligence layer can be built, your organizational data foundation must be sound. The guests detail how siloed Excel workflows, manual data pulls, and keyman risk have constrained the firm's analytical capacity, and how a centralized data stack is changing that.

What You'll Learn:

• Why Makena treats data infrastructure as the non-negotiable prerequisite for AI adoption

• How a $22B OCIO moved from fragmented, Excel-based workflows to a centralized, cloud-native data architecture

• What "one source of truth" means operationally and why inconsistent data across teams leads to incongruous decision-making

• How to manage the cultural and skills gap when moving analysts from Excel to SQL and BI tooling, without making data engineering their day job

• The two-phased roadmap: structured data consolidation first, then unstructured data contextualization via AI

• Why "garbage in, garbage out" is the most important AI principle institutional LPs & allocators aren't taking seriously enough

• What leadership buy-in actually looks like in practice and why without it, transformation stalls

About Breanna Genecov & Kunal Koppula:

Breanna Genecov leads the Portfolio Solutions and OCIO team at Makena Capital Management. Over more than a decade at the firm, she has held roles across manager research, portfolio strategy, and risk management, with a current focus on the design and implementation of multi-asset class portfolios.

Kunal Koppula leads Makena's data engineering team. He previously worked as a trader and quantitative developer before joining Makena, where he now oversees all data-related workflows across the organization and is spearheading the firm's transition to a centralized, scalable data architecture.

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