Nicole

to feel important.

They're not there for their own purposes.

If everyone can start from the place that we all have the same North Star that we're going for here, that we need to deliver

a certain outcome so that we can pay pensions in the future.

That's what you have to start there.

You have to join arms and start there.

Once you buy in that you're all, you know, gunning for the same place, then you ask yourself, okay, well, how do I make that job easier for the board to give us the delegated authority, give us the autonomy that we need to be agile, to be good investment partners, to our GP friends, to make the right investment decisions.

And so

A lot of that, I think, came from our, you know, our real push, if you will, into making sure we are being as transparent as we possibly could be.

Always start with the assumption of if we educate the board and bring them along for the journey, as opposed to surprising them with a, this is what we need, and this is when we need it, and this is how much we need, we'd be in a much better place.

And I do think that for many reasons, I understand.

And I certainly learned, I certainly picked on it pretty quickly.

Maybe historically, that isn't how investment teams and boards in general work in many of the state pensions, this idea of being a partnership and being super transparent.

But I can tell you for a plan the size of PERS and the complexity of that plan, there's really no other way to have success other than

be in a partnership with the board and make sure that you're not surprising them, making sure that they're buying in and they're only going to buy in if they understand the why and the how and feel comfortable that the team is resourced appropriately, that the strategy makes sense, that the outcomes and the risk that we're taking are not going to put them in a precarious position with their stakeholders with respect to contribution levels, et cetera.

And so...

That whole hand-holding and learning from and exchanging of views was a super important piece that we really worked hard at as an investment team and working with the rest of the senior leadership on the enterprise side of Kelpers to make sure we were building stronger bonds with the board.

And I definitely felt

supported by that board.

I know the board changes, board changes all the time.