Liza Scott

Liza serves as portfolio manager and CIO for select CornerStone clients. She is also co-head of the portfolio management team and a member of the investment committee. Prior to joining CornerStone in 2023, she was vice president of asset management at Dominion Energy Inc., serving as CIO for more than $20 billion of retirement and nuclear decommissioning trust assets. She was previously the director of public markets & real estate at Spider Management Co,, the investment office of the University of Richmond, and an outsourced CIO for other endowments and foundations. Prior to Spider, she was an associate at J.P. Morgan Investment Management and a teacher at a New York City public high school. Liza earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She serves on the board of directors of the University of Virginia Foundation and the board of trustees of the Medical College of Virginia Foundation.

CIO: What is one principle from your career that has proven especially relevant in today’s environment, and how have you applied it recently?

Scott: One principle I have always valued deeply is the importance of building authentic relationships—whether with highly sought-after GPs, fellow LPs I learn from every day, colleagues or client investment committee and staff members. At every point in my career, I have deliberately cultivated a network of genuine connections, and it’s a large part of why this work rarely feels like a job. It’s something I truly enjoy.

I don’t think it’s a unique insight that as artificial intelligence evolves, relationships and access may be among the few things it cannot replace in the investment and OCIO process—your readers have likely heard that “EQ is the new IQ.” But I am spending a great deal of time thinking about how I can continue to strengthen my relationships and networking abilities, precisely because I believe they will only become more critical in the years ahead.

CIO: Which asset classes, sectors, or strategies are most attractive today (e.g., credit, infrastructure, secondaries, real assets), and what is driving your conviction?

Scott: Relative to peers, our biggest overweight is in hedge fund strategies—more specifically, long/short equity. I give full credit to my colleagues for spending the better part of a decade building a differentiated strategy in this asset class, one designed to deliver equity-like returns with materially lower volatility than equities.

There are compelling reasons why this may be a particularly attractive moment for long/short equity: increased dispersion and reduced correlation among stocks, elevated volatility, higher interest rates, and a growing need for alpha as expectations for beta returns moderate. But much of my conviction is grounded in something more durable—my team’s demonstrated ability to execute exceptionally well in this space, independent of any particular market backdrop.

CIO: How is AI changing the way you generate insights, provide advice or otherwise work with clients—and where do you see its greatest limitation today?

Scott: We are investing significant time integrating AI into our workflows across the firm, squarely in pursuit of one goal: boosting efficiency so we can devote more time to thoughtful, strategic and client-focused work—not replacing human cognition or decisionmaking. We are already seeing substantial time savings in research, analysis and data processing, as well as meaningful productivity gains in client content generation.

On a personal level, for someone my age—mid-40s, so decidedly not “AI-native”—the greatest challenge is simply committing time every day to tinker with new tools and features and forcing myself to build genuine fluency. I have a healthy paranoia about not becoming a dinosaur, and so I take the need for continuous learning seriously. We recently completed a two-day, firm-wide AI training, and I am actively working to put everything I learned into practice.