Total Portfolio Approach for Family Offices
Agenda
Presented by Michele Gambera, PhD, CFA, Northfield Head of Economic Analysis.
Total Portfolio Approach (TPA) is a set of principles that has emerged from the thinking and experience of a group of large asset owners, particularly sovereign wealth funds.
This webinar will illustrate practical examples of how family offices can implement TPA principles in portfolio construction, manager evaluation, and governance decisions. Family offices often hold concentrated positions in unlisted family companies as well as alternative investments, making them strong candidates for TPA.
The benefits include better understanding of risk exposures, quantification of the benefits and interactions from active management, more effective analysis of concentrated and illiquid positions, better diversification, and altogether stronger performance measurement and governance.
About Michele Gambera
Michele Gambera, PhD, CFA, is Head of Economic Analysis at Northfield Information Services, a leading risk management analytics provider known for its research-based applications and industry-wide thought leadership. In this role, he draws on decades of experience in institutional portfolio management to develop new features for Northfield’s programs and provide analysis for the firm’s institutional clients.
He joined Northfield in 2026 from UBS Asset Management, where he served as Head of Strategic Asset Allocation and led a team responsible for developing capital market expectations and advising large institutions, including sovereign wealth funds and pension plans, on portfolio diversification and construction. He spent 15 years at UBS.
Earlier in his career, Michele worked at Ibbotson Associates, Morningstar’s asset allocation consultancy, where he served as Senior Research Consultant and Chief Economist beginning in 2006. During his more than nine years at Morningstar, he also held roles as Senior Quantitative Analyst and Chief Economist for Morningstar Associates LLC.
Before joining Morningstar, he spent two years as an Economist in the Supervision and Regulation Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
In addition to his extensive experience in economic and quantitative analysis, Gambera has a strong academic background. He has published in leading academic journals, including The Journal of Finance, and has held several teaching roles, including at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and in the Master of Quantitative Finance program at the University of Illinois.
Michele holds a BA/MA in Economics with honors from the University of Trento in Italy and a PhD in Economics from the Pennsylvania State University. He is a CFA charterholder, co-author of two chapters in the CFA curriculum, as well as a member of the Chicago Quantitative Alliance and the CFA Society of Chicago.