Nicole

You're learning from people around you all the time.

And so getting more of a teaching hospital mentality of being in the building on same days was important.

I think having the tough conversation and getting the board's support and buy-in around, let's align compensation with performance.

Let's really think about what that compensation structure looks like.

Are we incentivizing people to do the right thing versus incentivizing folks to, it doesn't really matter if I work super hard or I don't work super hard, I'm getting paid the same.

Let's make sure we were

really instilling the right behaviors in individuals so that folks were motivated to do the right thing and get compensated accordingly.

That exercise alone is not easy to do in any organization.

I think that exercise alone in a large state pension really requires the

education and help and support and buy-in from the board, which we had, thankfully, at CalPERS at that point in time, to really be more thoughtful on the compensation structure.

So I think that went a long way.

I think it went a long way across the organization, and it certainly went a long way within the investments department.

The decision-making

structure upstream.

So having, you know, the heads of the asset classes not only gather for investment decision making, but also gather around the table for the portfolio construction and risk management of the program, and also gathering around the table for the administrative bits so that everyone was owning each other's problems in those respective categories.

When those types of decisions on the admin side are being made in a silo or in the investing side or on the risk or portfolio construction side,

You're never going to get to a place where you see true collaboration and you're certainly not going to build a culture that is ready for such a big shift from SAA, strategic asset allocation, to more of a total portfolio approach.

And so we were just planting the seeds in those, you know, in those early months and into the extent of my tenure to make sure that we would be well positioned to speak the speak of a less siloed, more total portfolio approach.

I think the first simple but not so easy task, I guess, everyone has to buy in that the board is there for the sole purpose of making sure that their stakeholders, their constituents can retire with dignity, full stop.

I mean, if you can't start from that place and give them the benefit of the doubt that they're really just, they're not there to be in control, they're not there to