Harvard Management Company CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar Tells Board He Plans to Retire as Early as 2027

N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company, has told members of HMC’s board that he plans to retire as early as fall 2027, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Narvekar, who has led Harvard’s endowment for nearly a decade, has not set a definitive departure date, though he has discussed leaving in late 2027 to allow for a succession process, the person said.

Narvekar’s exit would close a tenure defined by a sweeping overhaul of HMC, which stewards the University’s $56.9 billion endowment. Since Narvekar arrived in 2016, Harvard’s endowment has grown from $35.7 billion to $56.9 billion and narrowed a performance gap with peer institutions.

Under Narvekar, HMC has shifted sharply away from internal asset-class teams and toward a generalist model more closely resembling those of other major university endowments. Roughly 90 percent of the endowment is now managed by external managers, while HMC investment staff make decisions across the full portfolio.

His planned departure was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Narvekar was hired after a 14-year stint managing Columbia University’s endowment, inheriting a Harvard fund that consistently struggled to keep up with its competition. In the years after the 2008 financial crisis, Harvard’s 10-year average real return hovered between 5 percent and 6 percent annually, trailing its Ivy+ peers by a sizable margin.

Within months of his arrival in December 2016, HMC laid off half the management company’s staff, and spun off multiple investment teams. The endowment’s natural resources team exited the HMC to form Solum Partners in 2020, and Harvard’s real estate team became part of Bain Capital in 2018. The private credit team launched Evolution Credit Partners the same year, earning a $300 million principal investment from HMC.

He also moved the firm toward private equity, which made up just 16 percent of the endowment’s portfolio in 2017 and more than 40 percent by fiscal year 2025.

In recent years, Narvekar expanded HMC’s physical footprint, opening a Singapore office in 2022 and a San Francisco office this year.

His successor will inherit an endowment facing new financial pressures. Harvard reported a $113 million operating deficit in fiscal year 2025 — its first since the Covid-19 pandemic — even as the endowment grew. The University is also navigating an 8 percent federal excise tax on endowment income, which Harvard officials have said could cost the University more than $200 million annually, and continued uncertainty over federal research funding.

The HMC head is typically the highest-paid employee at the University — Narvekar raked in $6.2 million in 2024 and $6 million the year before, according to University tax filings.

Though Narvekar boosted the endowment’s returns, it still lags behind top performers. Harvard, for instance, reported 12 percent returns in fiscal year 2025, while MIT reported 14.8 percent and Stanford reported 14.3 percent.

Harvard sold much of its investments in cryptocurrency in the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal year, including its nearly 3.9 million shares in BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust and 43 percent of its investment in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust.

HMC has worked to preserve financial stability in the wake of threats to the University’s federal research funding last year. Harvard began eyeing a $675 million bond sale last month and tapped the debt markets twice last spring — issuing $450 million in tax-exempt bonds in March 2025 and $750 million in taxable bonds the following month.

HMC has not announced how it will select Narvekar’s successor. When Narvekar was hired in 2016, Harvard tapped David Barrett Partners to assist with the search, which concluded roughly two months after former HMC CEO Stephen Blyth stepped down.

A spokesperson for HMC declined to comment on Narvekar’s plans.

Correction: May 27, 2026

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Narvekar plans to retire in fall 2027. In fact, Narvekar told members of HMC’s board that he plans to retire as early as fall 2027.

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at megblon.50. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.