Paula Volent is Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at The Rockefeller University, a private graduate university in New York City focused on the biological and medical sciences. Ms. Volent is responsible for the oversight and management of the University’s endowment. Prior to joining Rockefeller University in August 2021, Ms. Volent was the Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts College in Brunswick, Maine. Prior to joining Bowdoin in July 2000, Ms. Volent was a Senior Associate at the Yale University endowment under the leadership of David Swensen. Ms. Volent has a BA from the University of New Hampshire; a master’s degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University; a Certificate in Conservation from the Conservation Center at NYU, with a specialization in the conservation of works of art on paper; and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Prior to focusing on endowment management, Paula worked as a paper conservator at the New-York Historical Society, the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, the LA County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. She also ran a private paper conservation studio in Los Angeles, California. She serves on the Board of Directors of MSCI, Inc., as Vice Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Yale School of Management, a member of the Investment Committee of the Pritzker Family Foundation, a Trustee of the Skowhegan School of Art and Painting, an Investment Committee Member of the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Board Member of 1stDibs and MSCI. Ms. Volent was named one of the “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance by Barron’s in 2020.
Paula Volent
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”