Noelle Laing, chief investment officer of Builders Vision.
Courtesy of Builders Vision
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Builders Vision, the family office of billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, has promoted Noelle Laing to chief investment officer.
The Chicago-based firm uses philanthropy and impact investing to address three global challenges: clean energy, food sustainability and ocean health.
Laing started working with Walton 12 years ago when he was a client at Cambridge Associates, where she managed impact investments. She joined Builders Vision in 2019 and has served as CIO of the firm’s philanthropy arm, Builders Initiative, since 2022.
In that capacity, Laing shifted 90% of the $1.7 billion endowment to “mission-aligned investments” that advance social and environmental causes and led a team that invested more than $300 million in early-stage startups and fund managers.
In her new role across the full family office, Laing will also oversee some family trusts and the firm’s asset management arm. A spokesperson told CNBC that Builders Asset Management has a multibillion-dollar taxable portfolio but declined to specify its size.
“Noelle has been instrumental in the success of our investment strategies and is the perfect person for the job,” said Walton in an announcement. “Through increased coordination and shared vision, we can be even more effective at pursuing these goals across our sectors.”
Laing is consolidating the two divisions’ investment teams and will oversee about 20 investors. She plans to make about a half dozen hires, bringing the team’s headcount to nearly 30.
Builders Vision represents a growing class of family offices with assets and headcounts that rival those of institutional investors. Laing told CNBC that this scale allows Builders Vision to tackle its core causes in a wide range of ways spanning nonprofit grants, small bets on startups that are piloting new technology and multimillion-dollar co-investments and allocations to fund managers.
“It’s a spectrum of investments, and it allows us to really get a deep view of the different ways that we can get exposure and move oceans, food and agriculture and energy into the future,” she said. “We can choose which tool in which portfolio to see that vision through.”
Builders Vision recently backed Norway’s Bluefront Equity, a sustainable seafood fund. In November, the firm co-guaranteed $70 million of debt held by the Bahamas, allowing the government to borrow at a lower cost and allocate the savings to marine conservation.
Laing started her career at Cambridge Associates in 2003, leaving in 2008 to work at the Red Cross and a pension fund. She returned to the investment advisory in 2010.
Laing is part of a small but growing group of women managing investments for the ultra-rich including Erin Harkless Moore of Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures and Margo Doyle of S-Cubed Capital, the family office of billionaire venture capitalist Mark Stevens. Rebecca Carland, now CIO of the Knight Foundation, served as CIO of Builders Asset Management until late last year.
All four women are also alumna of Cambridge Associates, the top advisor to wealthy families, endowments and foundations with some 300 senior investment staff. David Jallits, another Cambridge Associates veteran, oversees investments for Chicago’s Duchossois family.
“You have so many resources and so many people’s different opinions, which is such a big part of the magic of Cambridge,” Laing said. “It’s a great training ground for a place like Builders Vision where you can focus and then implement kind of the best ideas from Cambridge.”
Correction: This story has been updated to remove an incorrect detail surrounding Noelle Laing’s work while at Cambridge Associates.
