Alice W. Handy, an investment manager who played a pivotal role in building the University of Virginia's endowment portfolio, died on May 30 at age 75. Handy shared her knowledge and goodwill in service to the Miller Center, using her considerable experience in public service, philanthropy, finance, and university leadership to better the organization. She was a Governing Council member from 2014 until 2022 and served as the chair from 2018 to 2020. She also was a member and chair of the Miller Center Foundation Board. In 2022 she was selected as a member of the Holton Society, which recognizes supporters who have given their time, talent, and resources to support the work of the Center.

Handy  was founder and former president  of Investure, an outsourced investment office for colleges and foundations, which she led from 2003 until her retirement in 2018. Before starting Investure, she spent 29 years with UVA, beginning as its first investment officer, later becoming treasurer and finally president of the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO). She was treasurer of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1988 to 1990. In addition to her service as chair of the Miller Center Governing Council and Miller Center Foundation Board, Handy also was chair of the Board of Trustees for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and served on the boards of her alma mater Connecticut College, Focused Ultrasound Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, The American Friends of the National Gallery, London, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the United Way of Greater Charlottesville, and the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, among other organizations.

She is survived by her husband, Peter Stoudt, and children Nick, Jenny, and Abby.

A REMEMBRANCE FROM BILL ANTHOLIS, Miller Center director

Alice Handy’s contributions to and impact on the University of Virginia are nearly impossible to overstate. She dedicated most of her professional life to the University—either as an employee or a volunteer. She helped to grow the University’s endowment and other investments in a way that has sustained it as a premier public university. She joined the Miller Center’s board just before I began as director and was a friend and partner to me and to so many of you.

Handy moved to Virginia in 1974 and spent nearly three decades with the University. She began as UVA’s first investment officer, managing the University’s endowment. She later became an assistant vice president and then the first woman treasurer of the University. During that period, she brought to UVA an emerging philosophy of modern endowment portfolio investing and was a pioneering leader in the field. In 1988, she took a brief leave of absence from the University when Governor Jerry Baliles appointed her to be State Treasurer of Virginia—the first woman to hold that post. She returned to UVA in 1990 and resumed her work with UVA’s endowment. She later became the first president of the newly-formed University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO).

She provided literally a “textbook example” of high-performing institutional investment, featured in a Darden School of Business case study for her innovative ground-up approach to building university investment operations. Over the course of 29 years at the University, she stewarded UVA’s endowment, which grew from $60 million when Handy was hired in 1974 to nearly $2 billion when she left in 2003, making it one of the largest among American public universities.

In 2003, she established Investure, an endowment management firm that grew to become one of the most important and successful firms of its kind by the time she retired in 2018. Handy also served as chair of the Board of Trustees for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello) during these years.

Her impact on us at the Miller Center was profound. She served on the Governing Council from 2014 until 2022. During her time as chair, she was a host and participant in the 2019 Presidential Ideas Festival, where she introduced one of our signature kick-off panels—a conversation with John Negroponte, Bob Rubin, and Ann Compton—focused on a topic dear to her heart and mind: the global economy and geopolitics.

As Governing Council chair from 2018 to 2020, Handy did much more. She oversaw the development of the Miller Center’s 2020 Strategic Plan, including revising the by-laws and committee charters. She encouraged and helped the staff to draft a Values Statement, including sharing elements from her own effort to do so at Investure, and she was instrumental in encouraging Council members to sign on to this staff-driven enterprise. She was particularly well suited to the Miller Center’s commitment to a deeper partnership with the University, while helping us retain our distinctive substantive focus and unique governance structure. In her final year on the Governing Council, she and her husband Peter Stoudt helped endow the James C. Lehrer Lecture, and she also helped launch the inaugural Lehrer lecture, featuring Judy Woodruff. She also chaired the Foundation Board and was elected to the Holton Society.

Handy will be missed deeply by all who knew and worked with her. She was passionate about the Miller Center and about the University of Virginia. She also was passionate about Monticello, and—along with Peter Stoudt—the preservation and conservation of historic assets and properties. She contributed to so many other national and local community efforts, including her alma mater Connecticut College (on whose board she served at the time of her passing), Focused Ultrasound Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, The American Friends of the National Gallery, London, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the United Way of Greater Charlottesville, and the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.

She was both exceptionally intelligent and deeply wise, able to read a room just as easily as she could size up a balance sheet. She focused on the Miller Center’s core strengths and encouraged us to build on them. Where she saw areas for improvement, she tended to them, as someone tends a garden or maintains an historic structure. She was a loyal friend, sharing advice and counsel directly, as well as empathy and encouragement. 

All of us at the Miller Center will miss her deeply—starting with me. I’m so appreciative that Peter Stoudt and their children Nick, Jenny, and Abby shared Alice Handy with us. They all know how much she meant to the Miller Center family and our community.