Jonathon S. Jacobson
Jonathon S. Jacobson is the Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Highfields Capital Management LP. Founded in 1998, Highfields is a Boston-based investment management firm which manages roughly $11 billion globally on behalf of endowments, foundations, pension funds and other institutional investors. In October 2018, Highfields announced it would be returning outside capital to investors over the ensuing nine months.
Prior to founding Highfields, Mr. Jacobson spent eight years as a senior portfolio manager at Harvard Management Company, Inc., which is responsible for investing Harvard University’s endowment. Before that, he held positions at Lehman Brothers in New York and at Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York and Sydney, Australia.
Mr. Jacobson currently serves as a Director of iHeartMedia, Inc. and iHeartCommunications, Inc. He is also a past member of the Asset Managers’ Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, formed in 2007 to foster a dialogue with the Federal Reserve Board and Department of the Treasury on issues of significance to the investment industry.
Mr. Jacobson and his wife Joanna are co-Trustees of the One8 Foundation and are involved in numerous philanthropic causes. Jon is currently Chairman of the International Board of Trustees of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, and is a Lifetime Trustee of the Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland, where he serves on the school’s Investment Committee. He also currently serves on the Investment Committee of the Weizmann Global Endowment Management Trust. He is a former Vice Chair of the Brandeis University Board of Trustees, where he served from 2006-2014, a past member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors at the Harvard Business School and a former Trustee of the Birthright Israel Foundation.
Mr. Jacobson received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1987 and graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in 1983. He and his wife Joanna live in Boston and have three adult children.
