Episode summary
Erlina Yeo Terwelp: From Banking to PE to Family Office to Columbia Endowment
Capital Allocators with Ted Seides
· · 1 hr 9 min · Hosts: Ted Seides · Guests: Erlina Yeo Terwelp
Summary
Erlina Yeo Terwelp traces her path from Singapore, where she grew up in a family split between a commodities trader father and an organizational-behavior mother, into investing through economics at Columbia, investment banking at Citi, private equity at KATEN, growth equity, and a family office in Houston. She says that mix of tactical thinking and people judgment shaped how she approaches portfolio management and manager selection today.
At Columbia Investment Management, she joined nine years ago as a generalist and initially split her time across hedge funds, long-only, private equity, and niche strategies. She says Columbia’s framework was unusual because it emphasized risk-factor allocation and data-driven portfolio construction rather than a traditional bucketed endowment model. That setup forced her to think in terms of equity beta, liquidity, leverage, and underlying risk exposures instead of simply filling asset-class sleeves.
Her role has since shifted toward private markets and more portfolio-construction work after Columbia moved from a generalist model to a specialist team structure under Kim. Erlina says the change was additive, not a loss of heritage, and it broadened her thinking about tilts, diversification, and how rising rates change underwriting. She focuses now on manager quality, operating value creation, vintage diversification, and team development, while also seeing the current environment as one that demands more discipline around private-market risk.
Key takeaways
- Erlina says Columbia’s earlier generalist model was unusually data-heavy and risk-factor driven, closer to a total portfolio approach than a traditional endowment setup.
- She argues that manager selection and business analysis share the same fundamentals: edge, positioning, moats, and the quality of the leadership team.
- Higher interest rates have made operating value creation more important in buyout underwriting, in her view, because leverage matters less and growth and margin expansion matter more.
- She says Columbia is still comfortable growing its private portfolio because it has relatively little venture exposure and a manageable level of unfunded commitments.
- Erlina says vintage diversification is especially important now, because venture valuations and fund formation have become unusually hot in the current market.
Notable quotes
“I think my dad's side of things where he thinks a lot in you know sort of uh what do you buy something for what is it what is it worth and how can can you sell it”
“there was a lot of focus on alpha. Um there was a lot of focus on making sure that that manager could deliver alpha”
“we managed it through risk factor allocation. Um it's something that is more similar to today's uh total portfolio approach”
“I don't think there is a huge huge difference in the fundamentals of what you're looking at between a business and and a manager”
How the episode opens
Erina, thanks so much for doing this. — Thank you for having me. — I want to start with a question that we use as an icebreaker at some of our summits and it's really to learn and hear about, you know, your upbringing and your foundations. So tell us where you grew up and how that upbringing has informed who you are today.
I grew up in Singapore. Um so came here for college. So spent 18 years of my life in Singapore.
Uh my father uh was a commodities trader. So he did that for uh more than three decades. And my mom has a doctorate in organizational behavior and ran her own consulting firm.
So when people ask me about my upbringing it's always really interesting because it was such a yin and yang um and uh you know of my dad who was who was very tactical, very very direct, very abrupt, everything you would expect a trader to be uh and my mom who is uh very strategic and really psychoanalyzes everybody that she knows including her her three kids. So, um, so I just kind of grew up, uh, knowing my Mayor's Briggs, knowing where I stood.
What is your MyersBriggs? — Uh, you know, it it's interesting. It's a So, I'm an ENTJ. Um, but I used to be a P, a very very much a P. U, and it's it's really changed over time. So, I found that really interesting, too. I think there are more sophisticated ways today of analyzing people's personalities. But um you know my mom was like a human you know sort of a myasbriggs person. So test
Love that. And so how did that yin and yang how does that yin and yang uh come through today at this stage of your life and this stage of your professional career?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- private markets portfolio construction
- manager selection and diligence
- endowment investing
- portfolio tilts across geography stage and sector
- leadership and team development in allocating
Companies and tickers mentioned
- C
- Columbia Investment Management Company
- Citigroup
Watch the episode
Watch “Erlina Yeo Terwelp: From Banking to PE to Family Office to Columbia Endowment” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Capital Allocators with Ted Seides, this episode and its artwork belong to Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
