Karin Pierson

Karin Pierson is an Investment Portfolio Manager at Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators (DMBA), a Salt Lake City–based nonprofit that manages health, welfare, and retirement benefits for roughly 25 employers affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — including Brigham Young University, BYU–Idaho, BYU–Hawaii, Deseret Book, and various Church departments. DMBA's mission statement emphasizes "prudently managing the funds entrusted to us," and its investment team oversees the assets backing those benefit and retirement obligations.

Prior to DMBA, Pierson worked as an auditor at Deloitte, giving her an accounting and assurance foundation before moving into institutional investment management. Her public LinkedIn profile still surfaces under an "Accounting Manager" heading, consistent with a career path that ran from public-accounting audit into portfolio management. She works alongside colleagues such as Brian Israelsen, listed as a Senior Portfolio Manager at DMBA.

The investment vehicle Pierson's team supports, the Deseret Mutual Master Retirement Plan, is a single-employer, non-contributory defined-benefit corporate pension plan established in 1970. Investor databases (e.g., PitchBook, Premier Alternatives) profile it as an active LP that has made a large number of fund commitments across alternative asset classes such as private equity and private debt. In practice this means Pierson operates as an institutional allocator — evaluating and monitoring fund managers — rather than as an angel investor writing seed checks into startups.

• Institutional allocator profile: DMBA invests as a limited partner into external funds (private equity, private debt, and other strategies) to fund long-dated pension and benefit liabilities — a capital-preservation-and-growth mandate, not opportunistic seed betting.
• Diversified, multi-asset approach consistent with a defined-benefit pension plan; no single-sector thesis is publicly stated.
• "Prudent" stewardship is the explicitly stated governing principle (per DMBA's mission), implying preference for established, risk-managed managers and strategies.
• No public evidence of direct startup/angel seed investing under Pierson or DMBA; treat any "seed round / angel" label with skepticism.