Patrick Fleming

Patrick Fleming is a third-generation Wyomingite, born and raised in Cheyenne, who holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University. Before returning to public service in his home state, he spent roughly three to four decades in international finance, working primarily in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and New York, where he specialized in domestic and global bond markets, equities, and commodities. His private-sector career included serving as CEO of Barclays (Barclay) Investments — described in coverage as a 77-year-old New York investment firm — along with earlier roles at Lehman Brothers, Salomon Brothers, and Pinnacle World Investments. He also taught corporate finance, investment management, and energy trading and hedging to MBA and undergraduate students at the University of Wyoming.

Fleming joined the Wyoming State Treasurer's Office as Chief Investment Officer in 2014, succeeding Michael Walden-Newman. He began as effectively a "one-man shop" charged with generating fiscally responsible returns on the state's roughly $19–19.5 billion in non-pension assets. Over his tenure he built out an in-house team of about 10 professional investors and analysts and grew the portfolio to more than $30 billion, even as nearly $9 billion in earnings was distributed to support state budgets. Coverage noted the fund exceeded its benchmarks for five consecutive years and generated hundreds of millions in additional revenue.

Fleming shifted Wyoming's approach away from a traditional stock-and-bond framework toward more modern portfolio construction, implementing a volatility-based risk-measurement system to manage the sovereign wealth pool. His visibility in institutional-investor circles included speaking appearances at the Milken Institute Global Conference (e.g., GC21 and the 2024 Global Conference) and interviews with outlets such as Chief Investment Officer (ai-cio.com) and Trusted Insight.

In 2023 Fleming was Wyoming's highest-paid state administrator, with total compensation of about $525,959 (roughly $275,959 base plus $250,000 in performance-based compensation). He announced his retirement in September 2024 and stepped down on June 30, 2025.

• Managed the State of Wyoming's non-pension "sovereign wealth" style portfolio (~$19.5B in 2014 growing to $30B+), with the primary mandate of maximizing fiscally responsible returns to help fund the state budget.
• Diversified, benchmark-relative institutional allocation across public equities, global fixed income, and commodities, drawing on his decades of markets experience in bonds, equities, and commodities.
• Moved the program away from a conventional equity/bond split toward modern portfolio construction and a volatility-based risk-measurement framework.
• Emphasized transparency and explaining "complex financial ideas in a way that gave confidence to policymakers" (as Gov. Mark Gordon described his stewardship).
• No verifiable evidence of angel, seed, or venture-stage startup investing; the mandate was institutional public-fund management, not direct early-stage company investing.