The OCIO That Keeps Raising the Bar on AI: Inside TIFF's Culture of Continuous Improvement

Brad Calder, Managing Director, Head of Equities at TIFF Investment Management, joins The Agentic Allocator to walk through what two years of AI adoption looks like inside the OCIO. Brad leads TIFF’s public equity investments, including select arbitrage and crypto strategies, and plays a central role in manager selection and portfolio construction, and has spearheaded the firm's AI implementation. TIFF is an OCIO serving endowments, foundations, and other mission-driven organizations. In this episode, Brad walks through what AI adoption looks like on the ground: the use cases that are delivering tangible ROI, the ones that are still works in progress, the infrastructure decisions that turned out to matter, and the cultural conditions that made it all possible.

Brad describes one of the most ambitious projects on TIFF's roadmap: a tool for the investment committee that connects every memo the firm has ever written to structured returns and exposure data, automatically surfacing the three most comparable historical investments whenever a new decision is being discussed. For a 35-year-old organization where no current IC member has been there since inception, this tool would give the IC access to the full weight of every decision TIFF has ever made.

He also makes a sharp point about what AI adoption requires that most allocators underestimate: the willingness to keep re-experimenting, because the underlying models improve fast enough that something that failed six months ago may now be entirely viable. Think of it like high school chemistry, he says: if the experiment doesn't work, you alter it and try again.

What You'll Learn:

• How TIFF's decade of backing machine learning oriented hedge funds gave them a head start on understanding and trusting AI before the rest of the industry caught up
• Why TIFF's legacy research management system became the catalyst for their AI build-out and what the 'SaaSpocalypse' means for allocators still locked into incumbent technology providers
• How TIFF is using AI across unstructured data pitch books, quarterly letters, capital call notices
• The collective intelligence tool TIFF is building for its investment committee: surfacing comparable historical investments, tied to returns data, going back to the firm's founding
• Why the ROI of AI for allocators is not just efficiency and where Brad believes the real value will ultimately be felt
• How TIFF combines offshore BPO with AI tools, and why the combination is complementary rather than substitutive
• What an AI-enabled allocator looks like in five to ten years: instant probability estimates on prospective managers, AI-shaped due diligence agendas, and humans focused on the relationships and control rights that resist disintermediation
• Why subscale endowments and foundations face a real risk of being left behind and why that is part of TIFF's mission to solve
• The high school chemistry framework for AI experimentation: alter the experiment, keep trying, and never conclude something can't work based on a model that's already six months out of date

About Brad Calder:

Brad Calder is Managing Director, Head of Equities at TIFF Investment Management, where he leads TIFF’s public equity investments and has spearheaded its AI adoption and implementation. TIFF is anOCIO serving of endowments, foundations, and other mission-driven organizations. Brad has been at TIFF for 11 years. Before joining TIFF, he built expertise in systematic and machine learning-oriented investment strategies that has since informed the firm's approach to integrating AI across its investment and operational process.

Disclaimer: Bradley Calder is the Managing Director, Head of Equties at TIFF Investment Management. All views expressed by him on this podcast are solely his opinions and do not reflect the opinions of TIFF. You should not treat any opinions expressed by Brad as a specific endorsement to make a particular investment. References to any securities are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Any past performance discussed is not indicative of future results. Please keep in mind that investment in a fund entails a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss. Please note that the ads featured in this podcast are not endorsed by TIFF, and TIFF is not a sponsor of these ads.

TIFF assets under management (AUM) is as of 9/30/25 and includes discretionary and non-discretionary client assets for which TIFF affiliates provide investment management or advisory services. The private markets portion of TIFF AUM is calculated based upon fund net asset value plus unfunded commitments. Calculation of TIFF AUM differs from the calculation of regulatory assets under management in TIFF’s Form ADV filings with the SEC and may differ from the AUM calculation methodologies used by other investment managers.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, nor should it be used to evaluate any investment or security. It is not directed at, or intended for, any current or prospective investor in any investment vehicle sponsored by TIFF. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of TIFF as of the date hereof and are subject to change based on prevailing market and economic conditions. References to specific companies are for illustrative and educational purposes only and do not represent an endorsement or investment recommendation.