My journey to joining the CAIA Association proves you’re able to do it while balancing a busy career and a full life. The process wasn’t fast, but it was worth it. I bought the Level 1 text book and occasionally reviewed it in my moments of down time, but ultimately didn’t end up taking the exam until two years later, studying while juggling caring for a newborn on my maternity leave. I took the Level 2 test a year later, for which I started preparing six months in advance, cramming studying into late nights and the scattered spare hours I was able to find (including on the subway!) so I could still perform at a high level at work and enjoy important family time with my husband and two children.
In my role as a Managing Director at Partners Capital, a global outsourced investment office focused endowment-style multi-asset class portfolio, I am required to be a mile wide in terms of the breadth of my alternatives knowledge. I need to have a deep understanding of all the asset classes and their intricacies to build custom portfolios for my institutional and ultra-high net worth clients. Despite having done private equity manager due diligence earlier in my career and having 6+ years with Partners Capital, I wanted to take my understanding of alternatives to a deeper level. I chose to take the CAIA exam because its focus aligned with the heavy emphasis on alternatives in my client portfolios. CAIA also remains on the cutting edge of ever-evolving investment opportunities and risks, providing content pertinent to today’s investors, such as the Digital Assets micro credential, which I also completed. Every topic covered in the CAIA is something we either invest in or have considered for our clients.
The CAIA’s content has been directly applicable to my daily work, giving me a more detailed and practical understanding of alternative asset classes, such as exactly how a CLO works, how to set up a merger arbitrage trade, and how to better evaluate the strategies of alternative asset managers. My conversations with clients on the benefits and risks of various alternative investments and how they perform in different situations reflect what I learned from the CAIA.
I am proud to say that many junior professionals at my firm have now signed up for the CAIA, and I was able to pass along my flashcards and study books to the next generation.
About Anne Duggan, CAIA, MBA
Anne Duggan is the Managing Director at Partners Capital, where she builds bespoke endowment-style portfolios utilizing the full range of alternatives, for both institutional and high net worth clients. Partners Capital is a $53B outsourced investment office.
Prior to joining Partners Capital in 2017, Anne was a Director at Fidelity Investments focused on corporate strategy, an Investment Associate at Credit Suisse making private equity investments on behalf of institutional clients, and an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Anne received a BA with honors in Business Economics from Brown University and a MBA with distinction, as well as Tuck Scholar designation, from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.