Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi is the founder and Executive Director of the Carbon Containment Lab (CC Lab).
Prior to launching the CC Lab, Dean was Senior Director of the Yale Investments Office for more than 33 years. During his tenure, the Yale Endowment was one of the world’s top performing institutional funds, growing from $1.5 billion to more than $30 billion. Annual spending from Endowment increased from $49 million to $1.4 billion.
Together with Yale’s Chief Investment Officer David Swensen, Dean developed numerous innovations to endowment management, allocated capital to nascent markets, and partnered early with leading investment managers. Dean helped build investment programs in venture capital, biotechnology, absolute return, emerging markets, sustainable forestry, renewable energy, and carbon offsets. He also developed stochastic models that integrated asset allocation and spending policy, and an illiquid alternative asset fund model now widely used by institutional investors.
Dean received his BA magna cum laude with distinction in Economics in 1980 from Yale University and his MPPM in 1983 from the Yale School of Organization and Management. A Lecturer in Economics since 1992 and Adjunct Professor at the Yale School of Management since 2006, Dean teaches a senior economics seminar in Yale College and a course on endowment management at the School of Management. In 2018, he received the Merton J. Peck Prize for distinction and excellence in teaching in the Department of Economics.
Dean is, or has been, a member of investment committees for numerous philanthropies such as the Kresge Foundation and Save the Children. Dean formerly served as a board member of a variety of community and educational organizations as well as two NYSE-listed investment companies. Prior to his employment at Yale, Dean worked at Affirmative Investments in Boston and as a VISTA volunteer in Vermont. During the financial crisis, he served briefly in 2009 as a Special Governmental Employee to help at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Dean is married to Wendy Sharp, Director of Chamber Music and Assistant Professor Adjunct of Violin at the Yale School of Music. They have two children, Kerry and Kai Takahashi.