“I believe in the mission of MIT,” says Dennis Kass, “particularly of MIT Sloan, which is to develop ‘principled and innovative leaders.’ I’ve come to appreciate how critical this is in both public- and private-sector organizations, and I’m excited to support an institution grounded in values I cherish.”
Kass, who has had a 33-year career in financial services and government, recently established a charitable remainder unitrust that will be invested in the MIT endowment to support the MIT Sloan School of Management. He chose a unitrust, he says, because it offers an attractive complement to other sources of retirement income while providing superb stewardship for assets that ultimately will benefit the school.
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“Investing in the MIT endowment squares with my own objective as an investor to generate positive real rates of return,” he says. “After reviewing the fund’s investment policy and performance, I concluded that I wouldn’t run it any differently from my personal account and certainly couldn’t run it any better.”
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Kass earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Principia College in 1972 and a master’s degree from Sloan in 1977. After starting his career as an energy banker at Citibank, he joined the White House as special assistant to the president for policy development. He was subsequently appointed assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor and headed the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration. He returned to the private sector as a vice president in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs and later joined J. P. Morgan Fleming Investment Management, where he was named vice chairman in 1999. In 2003, he joined Jennison Associates as chairman and CEO. Kass and his wife, Barclay, have been married since 1975 and have two sons. Hunter enters MIT’s master’s program in real-estate development this fall, and Miles is a ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
“The unitrust is an attractive diversifying investment that generates cash distributions to Barclay and me that vary with the rate of return on the MIT endowment fund’s broadly diversified global portfolio,” says Kass. “The fund’s asset allocation and risk orientation are perfectly suited for our circumstances.”
Donors can now establish trusts invested in the MIT endowment and benefit from its diversified investment portfolio. The income paid by such trusts has the potential to increase over time as the endowment does.
For more information, contact Judy Sager: 617-253-6463; jsager@mit.edu. Or visit giving.mit.edu/ways/invest-endowment.
