Advisory Board

Harpswell will also utilize the expertise of its Advisory Board to best serve our clients.  Harpswell‘s Advisory Board gives high level guidance and serves as an invaluable resource for best practices, fund managers and macroeconomic insights.  Members of the Advisory Board include David Russ, founding partner and Chief Investment Officer/Strategist at Spruceview Capital and Gus Sauter, retired Chief Investment Officer for Vanguard. 

David Russ, founding partner and Chief Investment Officer/Strategist at Spruceview Capital

David Russ is a nationally recognized endowment and investment manager with 30-years of institutional investment management experience with foundations, endowments, corporate and public pension plans, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and family offices.

He was the founding partner and Chief Investment Officer/Strategist at Spruceview Capital providing a complete and holistic partnership approach to manage clients' entire portfolios across all asset classes. Prior to his tenure at Spruceview, David was Chief Investment Strategist and a Managing Director at Credit Suisse Asset Management in New York. David's Credit Suisse advisory portfolio extended from NYC and the Americas to Asia, South East Asia, and AustralAsia.

Before being recruited to Credit Suisse, David spent more than 18-years serving a variety of academic institutions in managing their endowment and foundation investment portfolios. Most recently (2005-2009) he was the first Chief Investment Officer for Dartmouth College’s endowment and prior to that he held leadership roles at the Regents for the University of California, the University of Texas Investment Management Company and Stanford University. David wrote the business plan that formed the Stanford Management Company.

David holds a Master of Administration in Finance and Accounting from the University of California, Davis and a B.A. in Genetics from the University of California, Berkeley.  David also studied Solar Engineering, Differential Equations, and Material Sciences at UC Berkeley 1979-1980, where he built early solar panels and windmills. He is a former member of The Dean’s Advisory Board at UC Davis Graduate School of Management; a former member of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance; a former member of The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Investment Committee; a former member of the Tuck Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship Executive Advisory Board; Trustee Emeritus for the Dartmouth Class of 1953 Trust (managed external to Dartmouth); and a former trustee of the UC Davis Robert Mondavi Trust.

 Gus Sauter, Retired CIO for Vanguard

Mr. Sauter retired in 2012 from his role as Vanguard’s first Global Chief Investment Officer after 25 years with the company. As Vanguard’s CIO, he was a member of the CEO’s senior staff, directed the management of $1.7 Trillion in assets and oversaw Vanguard’s external manager program.                    

Mr. Sauter worked on industry issues with governmental entities including the SEC, and the Federal Reserve, as well as providing Congressional testimony. He served as a member of various industry committees, including the Investment Company Institute Trading Committee, the NYSE Institutional Advisors’ Trading Committee, the NASDAQ Quality of Markets, and the Securities Industry Association Trading Committee.   He participated on the AIMR (now CFA Institute) Best Execution Task Force). He is currently a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investors Advisory Group, and serves on three investment committees (for a foundation, an endowment and an Australian retirement fund).

Mr. Sauter is a member of the University of Chicago Booth School Council for the dean, and he is the Chairman of the Booth School’s alumni fundraising committee.  He also writes articles for The Wall Street Journal on-line edition. He received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and his MBA from the University of Chicago.

Emily R. McComb, SENIOR LECTURER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, Harvard Business School

Ms. McComb brings a career in active equity management and academia work relating to endowments, hedge funds, mutual funds and investor behavior.   She recently co-authored “Modern Endowment Management: Paula Volent and the Bowdoin Endowment.” 

Emily McComb is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance Unit at HBS, currently teaching the course "Finance 2" in the second semester of the required curriculum. Prior to joining the HBS faculty in 2017, Emily was a Managing Director at Bain Capital, where she was sector head of the Healthcare team at the firm's public equity division. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Emily was an analyst and a member of the Small Cap team at Fidelity Management and Research, focused largely on Healthcare, Industrial and Consumer companies. A Canadian native, she earned a BA with Great Distinction from McGill University in Economics and Political Science, and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School. Emily lives in Boston with her husband and two children