Steve Neel

Steve Neel is the Chief Investment Officer of the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, a roughly $20 billion pension fund that serves public school, charter school, college, and university employees across New Mexico. He was named CIO in June 2026, succeeding Bob Jacksha, who had held the role since 2007 and retired earlier that year. Neel was the internal "heir apparent," having spent nearly two decades at the fund — most recently as Deputy CIO overseeing alternative assets, which now make up close to half of NMERB's portfolio.

A native of Hawaii who has lived in New Mexico for more than 50 years, Neel earned both his bachelor's degree and his MBA from the University of New Mexico's Anderson School of Management. He returned there as a guest lecturer on alternative investments, mentoring students pursuing careers in finance and investment management.

Neel is closely identified with the build-out of NMERB's alternatives program, which launched in 2006. Over his tenure he pushed the fund well beyond traditional buyout private equity into private credit, real assets, and a range of specialist "diversifying" strategies. In 2009 he founded the fund's co-investment program, which has since committed more than $1 billion and generated a roughly 14% net internal rate of return since inception. In 2019 he helped create a new "Other Diversifying Assets" category designed to produce returns with limited correlation to public stocks and bonds.

Beyond NMERB, Neel has been active across New Mexico's institutional-investment community, serving as a Trustee and Chairman of the Investment Committee of the New Mexico Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA), NMERB's sister pension fund. On announcing his promotion, NMERB Executive Director David Archuleta said Neel's "extensive expertise and disciplined approach to portfolio management make him the ideal leader for our investment team."

• Invests as a limited partner and co-investor, committing pension capital to private-market funds and alongside managers — not writing seed checks into startups.
• Built a diversified alternatives portfolio now approaching half of a ~$20B fund, spanning private equity, private credit, and real assets.
• Strong tilt toward niche, less-crowded strategies where competition is thin: litigation finance, mitigation banking, music royalties, and aircraft leasing.
• Deliberately backs emerging and first-time managers and pursues secondary-market opportunities rather than concentrating capital with the largest brand-name buyout firms.
• Emphasizes creative, specialist partnerships as a path to differentiated returns — the theme of his 2025 Fifty Faces podcast appearance ("Partnerships as a Pathway to the Future?").
• Reflecting on where uncrowded opportunity historically sat, he has noted that turning the clock back ~25 years, "you could have started a secondary fund and done incredibly well" — a lens for seeking today's under-exploited strategies.
• The 2019 "Other Diversifying Assets" sleeve targets double-digit returns with low correlation to traditional equity and credit markets.