Key Takeaways
- Geography: United States.
Analysis
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which manages over $556 billion in assets, has appointed June Kim as its new Deputy Chief Investment Officer for Public Markets, effective December 1, 2025.
Kim joins CalPERS from the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), where she spent more than 11 years in senior investment roles. At CalSTRS, she held positions including interim co-deputy CIO, investment director for global equities, and, as of July 2024, senior investment director of total fund management. In that final role, Kim oversaw asset allocation, balance sheet management, and risk control, while advising the CIO on strategic and tactical portfolio decisions.
At CalPERS, Kim will report to Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore and partner with the fund’s managing investment directors in shaping portfolio direction. She succeeds Dan Bienvenue, who departed in April 2025 to join private equity firm General Atlantic as a managing director.
CalPERS is currently pursuing a shift to a total fund approach, with the board expected to vote on the transition in November. If approved, full implementation is slated for July 2026. Under the proposed model, the pension system would streamline benchmarks and emphasize holistic portfolio alignment across asset classes. This evolution aims to boost transparency, simplify decision-making, and strengthen risk controls. Kim’s experience in total fund strategies at CalSTRS is expected to be a critical asset in this transition.
Before her tenure at CalSTRS, Kim served as principal investment officer for equities at the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association and held roles at Northern Trust, Deutsche Asset Management, Citi, and Barclays Global Investors.
Kim’s appointment comes at a moment of strong performance at CalPERS: the fund delivered an 11.6 % return for fiscal 2025, exceeding its assumed 6.8 % discount rate and lifting its funded status to around 79 %. The positive results were driven by gains across public equities, private equity, and credit holdings. Private equity returns alone reached 14.3 %.
Her move is one of several high-profile leadership shifts in the U.S. public pension sector in 2025. Institutional investors nationwide are watching how large systems like CalPERS and CalSTRS evolve governance, asset allocation, and in-house management capabilities as markets become more complex and uncertain globally.