Five Alumni Named 2021-22 Donaldson Fellows

The Yale School of Management has named five alumni as Donaldson Fellows for 2021-22, recognizing them as embodying the school’s mission to educate leaders for business and society in their personal and professional accomplishments.

The newly named Donaldson Fellows are:

• Lori Hotz ’94, Cofounder and Co-CEO, Lobus
• Jane Mendillo ’84, Former President and CEO, Harvard Management Company
• Amanda Skinner ’08, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England
• Catherine Smith ’83, Board Member, Global Atlantic Financial Group
• Josh Wright ’98, Executive Director, ideas42

Donaldson Fellows are selected from among alumni nominated by members of the Yale SOM community. The selection committee includes alumni, students, faculty, former Donaldson Fellows, and members of the school’s leadership team.

The Donaldson Fellows Program is named for William H. Donaldson, Yale SOM’s founding dean, himself a leader with a lasting impact in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Biographies

Lori Hotz ’94 is the cofounder and co-CEO of Lobus, the Web3 on-ramp for top artists and collectors. In her previous role as global managing director for the Post-War and Contemporary Art department at Christie’s, Hotz grew the department fivefold, from $600 million to $3 billion, to become the largest art business in the world. Before joining Christie’s, Hotz led asset management businesses, where she managed a $52 billion platform of alternative and traditional assets, including as COO at Lazard, Barclays Wealth, and Lehman Brothers. She benefited from a rich mentoring experience early in her career as SVP of corporate strategy and development for Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan and is committed to mentoring and opening doors for early career professionals and high-profile leaders in the private and public sectors. 

Hotz received a B.A, from the University of Toronto, a master’s degree in environmental studies from Yale School of the Environment, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She was selected for Forbes’ inaugural “50 over 50 (Know your Value)” list featuring women who are opening doors for others while generating transformative change as leaders in their respective fields. She also serves on the finance committee of Broadway Inspirational Voices and is an active manager at the Asphalt Green Soccer Club.

Jane Mendillo ’84 has spent more than 30 years in the fields of endowment and investment management. Prior to her retirement in 2014, she was the president and CEO of the Harvard Management Company (HMC), managing Harvard University’s $37 billion global investment portfolio. Her tenure as the head of the largest university endowment began in 2008, spanning the global financial crisis and ending in 2014 with the endowment fully recovered from the crisis and the university once again on strong financial footing. While Mendillo was the CEO, Harvard became the first university endowment to join the PRI, a UN-supported network of investors committed to promoting sustainable investments through the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance factors into their investment decisions.

From 2002 to 2008, Mendillo was the chief investment officer at Wellesley College, where she established the college’s first professional investment office and diversified the endowment to include private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and real assets.

Prior to her time at Wellesley, Mendillo spent 15 years at HMC in various investment roles, beginning as an analyst in the public stock portfolio and ultimately managing Harvard’s substantial allocations to private equity, venture capital, emerging markets, and other alternative assets. Before joining HMC for the first time, she was a management consultant at Bain & Co.  

In addition to her service on the Yale Investment Committee from 2002 to 2008, Mendillo has also served on the SOM Alumni Board and the Yale University Council. Her first job after graduating from Yale College was as an investment analyst in the Yale Investment Office.

Mendillo has served on numerous other nonprofit investment committees and boards, including those of MassGeneralBrigham, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, The Boston Foundation, and The Investment Fund for Foundations. She currently serves on the board of the Berklee College of Music. 

Mendillo is currently a member of the board of directors of General Motors and Lazard Ltd. She is a Trustee of the Old Mountain Private Trust Company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  In 2009, Forbes Magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women” list placed Mendillo as number 37.

Mendillo is a 1980 graduate of Yale College and a 1984 graduate of the Yale School of Management. She and her husband, Ralph Earle’ 84, reside in New London, New Hampshire.

Amanda Skinner ’08 is president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. She is an experienced healthcare executive committed to improving health equity and healthcare access for all. She is a thought leader on sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights, value-based care, and population health. Skinner is a certified nurse-midwife and spent 10 years in clinical practice and practice leadership. During that time she served as chair of the Connecticut chapter of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, leading a successful campaign to expand the practice of nurse-midwives in Connecticut through policy change. Following her graduation from the Yale School of Management Skinner joined The Chartis Group as a healthcare strategy and operations consultant, spent six years at the Yale New Haven Health System, where she was instrumental in building out the population health, clinical integration, and value-based care operations, and then served as vice president and general manager at Optum, growing an integrated population health analytics and services business.

In 2017 Skinner accepted her dream job at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England and in 2019 was named to the board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She is a graduate of Rice University in Houston, Texas, holds a master’s degree in nursing from the Yale School of Nursing with a clinical focus in nurse-midwifery, and holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Skinner lives in Connecticut with her husband, Kalter, and their dog, Baxter.

Catherine Smith ’83 currently serves as a board member for Global Atlantic Financial Group, a privately owned insurance company operating in the United States and domiciled in Bermuda. This role builds on her deep experience in the retirement and financial services industries. Smith has served in a variety of positions in ING’s U.S. Retirement business, including CEO. She helped build more than $280 billion in assets while focusing on the customer experience and increasing return on equity.

Prior to joining ING in 2000, Smith held several investment and financial roles at Aetna. She started her career at the Aetna Investment Group, working with real estate and private placement loan origination. Later she led the investor relations office and became chief financial officer for the Aetna Retirement Business.

As a cap to her career and just prior to retirement from full-time work, Smith served as commissioner of economic and community development for the State of Connecticut from 2011 to 2019. She brought the diverse facets of her experience to create programmatic solutions designed to rapidly improve the economy in the state after the Great Recession. In addition to collaborating with companies across the state to add jobs and boost the economy, she oversaw historic preservation, arts, and tourism for state government.

At present, Smith serves as chair of Outward Bound USA as well as a member of the board of trustees of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She advises startups, including TravelStorysGPS, a Wyoming-based audio tour company. Additionally, Smith advises Yale University on its sustainability efforts as a member of the Carbon Offsets Working Group and as a senior advisor to the Carbon Containment Lab.

Smith is a graduate of Hampshire College and the Yale School of Management.

Josh Wright ’98 is a recognized leader in applied behavioral science. As the executive director of ideas42, he has overseen a decade of organizational transformation, and ideas42 is now the preeminent destination for social impact-focused applied behavioral science. Under Wright’s leadership, ideas42 has expanded the number of effective pathways for scaling applied behavioral science with the launch of new organizational projects, including the ideas42 Venture Studio, Policy Lab, and Academy. He has also overseen the diversification of ideas42’s capabilities by adding machine learning and data science to the organization’s skillset, and positioned ideas42 at the center of a growing behavioral science community in partnership with others in the field to create and launch the Behavioral Scientist, the leading magazine dedicated to reporting the latest developments from behavioral science.

Wright regularly advises governments, nonprofits, and private companies on applied behavioral science, and helped establish and staff the federal Social and Behavioral Science Team during the Obama administration. Throughout his career, Wright has been committed to addressing complex problems, particularly seeking to reduce poverty and inequality, improve education opportunities for all, and create financial services that work for lower-income people. Before starting his tenure at ideas42, Wright led the Office of Financial Education and Access at the United States Treasury Department. He has held previous leadership positions at the Center for Community Change, Bertelsmann’s Random House, Inc., and Booz Allen and Hamilton’s Commercial Strategy Consulting Business. He also has experience as an elected official having served on the Takoma Park City Council for four years.

Wright holds a B.A. in economics from Wesleyan University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He has served on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Behavior and has been a visiting lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland and enjoys discussing public policy issues and almost any type of exercise, particularly basketball. Woodworking is a hobby he does not get to do enough of, and he is an avid Boston Sports fan (but not tribal about it). He loves family time with his wife and three kiddos.