Kaiser Permanente has hired Steve Algert as executive director of pensions and investments following other Bay Area investment roles at The J. Paul Getty Trust and the University of California at Berkley.

Algert’s move to the Oakland, CA-based hospital system follows the death in 2021 of Janice Murphy, who was vice president of pensions and investments. The system is among the largest healthcare investment offices in the US with roughly $163 billion in assets.

Kaiser Permanente SVP and Treasurer Thomas Meier had reportedly been overseeing the program in the interim before Thomas Lurquin was hired as CIO in 2022.

Most recently, Algert was managing director of the Berkeley Endowment Management Company (BEMCO), where he spent just over two years on the investment team overseeing the approximately $7 billion portfolio of the UC Berkeley Foundation.

Prior to BEMCO he was managing director responsible for the distressed debt, credit-related and hedge funds at $6 billion foundation, The J. Paul Getty Trust. Before his 14 years at Getty, he worked at the Treasurer’s Office of the Regents of the University of California, managing the pension and endowment assets. He also had a role at the fund of hedge funds group at Citigroup Alternative Investments.