Leadership of MUSC Foundation changes hands

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Stuart Ames as the new CEO of the MUSC Foundation, the 501(c)(3) responsible for managing philanthropic assets used to support the University’s healthcare mission.

Ames comes to the foundation with a 26-year background in investment management and finance. A graduate of Brigham Young University and The Wharton School, he began his career at Morgan Stanley as a credit analyst and went on to become a director at SEI Investments, where he was responsible for strategy and investment product development.

He later served as the chief investment officer for Global Hedge Strategies, a joint venture that managed customized portfolios of hedge funds for clients of the Citi Private Bank.

For the past 12 years, Ames was a partner at King Pine Investments and a managing director at Commonfund, where he served as an outsourced chief investment officer for non-profit institutions that included universities, colleges and health care foundations. In that role, he helped manage endowments and other portfolios for clients representing between $40 million to $700 million in assets.

Ames is assuming responsibilities held for 18 years by Thomas P. Anderson who became the CEO of the MUSC Foundation in July 2001. Anderson retired in July after a long and successful career in support of MUSC.

Under Anderson’s leadership, the foundation’s total assets grew from $161 million to $627 million, and its net assets grew from $117 million to $449 million. Because of this growth, the foundation today is able to provide the MUSC and MUHA with an average of about $30 million in private financial support each year. Since 2001, it has provided a total of $521 million in support of the Medical University’s mission, in the form of scholarships, faculty recruitment, capital improvements, research funding and other program support.

 “We are grateful for all that Tom Anderson has contributed, knowing that he has established a solid base that Stuart Ames will continue to leverage and build into the future,” said MUSC President David J. Cole, M.D., FACS. “Our university and health system benefit enormously from the presence and support of the MUSC Foundation as well as from the thoughtful, experienced and proactive leadership provided by their board of directors.”