CalPERS Names New Investment Leaders for Private Assets, Total Portfolio

June 11, 2026

Communications & Stakeholder Relations
Office of Public Affairs
(916) 795-3991 – newsroom@calpers.ca.gov

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) today announced it has promoted Anton Orlich to be Deputy Chief Investment Officer for Private Markets after a global search. Orlich has served as Managing Investment Director of Private Equity at CalPERS since 2022 and was interim Managing Investment Director of Private Debt from 2024 to 2025.

CalPERS also announced the hiring of Derek Walker as Managing Investment Director for Total Fund Portfolio Management. Walker joins CalPERS after nearly 18 years in a variety of roles at CPP Investments, which manages assets on behalf of the Canada Pension Plan.

“I’m thrilled to announce the promotion of Anton Orlich and the hiring of Derek Walker,” said CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost. “They are among the most creative, experienced, and well-respected leaders in the pension world, and I’m confident they will produce results for our members.”

Anton Orlich

A former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan and a Harry S. Truman scholar, Anton Orlich has refocused CalPERS’ private equity strategy on manager selection, lower-cost structures, and diversification toward companies in venture, growth, and middle-market buyout.

CalPERS posted the best private equity performance among large public pension funds in the United States in the last fiscal year. For the 12 months ending March 31, CalPERS’ total private equity portfolio earned a return of 21.5% (PDF). The approximately $47 billion invested under the current strategy since 2022 returned 35.8%.

“Anton’s strong leadership of our private equity effort shows up not only in higher returns, but also through greater engagement and performance among our team members,” said CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore.

Orlich said careful manager selection and cost-effective implementation would continue to be hallmarks of the CalPERS strategy. The system has cut fees as a percentage of total private equity assets by 35% since 2024, and both private equity and private credit have increased their excess returns.

“We’ll continue to leverage the expertise of our investment team to partner with top managers and reduce costs,” Orlich said. “Investing in private companies gives us the opportunity to earn better returns for our members while diversifying the portfolio to limit risk. We greatly appreciate the vision and leadership of our CEO, Marcie Frost, to improve our funded status through private markets, and the important responsibility she has afforded to the private markets team to contribute to the retirement security of those who serve California.”

Orlich replaces Daniel Booth, who stepped down in October 2025. Orlich will report directly to Stephen Gilmore. The Deputy Chief Investment Officer for Private Markets oversees private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, and other alternative investment programs. His appointment will be effective immediately.

Orlich holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a doctoral degree from Yale University. He worked as a portfolio manager for private equity at CalPERS from 2013 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2022 as head of alternative investments for Kaiser Permanente, where he developed the innovative model he brought to CalPERS.

Orlich will continue to lead private equity until a replacement is selected.

Derek Walker

Derek Walker will play a key role in leading CalPERS’ transition to a Total Portfolio Approach. TPA is a holistic way of evaluating each potential investment strategy for its potential risk and ability to generate income for the pension fund, rather than setting specific allocations for each asset class.

In November 2025, CalPERS became the first large public pension fund in the United States to adopt the TPA approach, which will officially launch in July. Walker will report to Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore and oversee the Total Fund Portfolio Management team.

Walker’s appointment is effective July 2026. He will succeed Sterling Gunn, who retired last year. Brian Leu has served as interim managing investment director since Gunn’s retirement.

“I am delighted to welcome Derek to the team,” said Gilmore. “This is a critical position for the Investment Office, and it was important to hire an expert investor with a solid grasp of portfolio management and construction as we prepare for a Total Portfolio Approach. I believe we found the right person for the job.”

Walker has extensive experience with TPA, having led multiple groups within Total Fund Management at CPP Investments over the course of 10 years, including Portfolio Design & Construction, Active Investment Management, and Portfolio Engineering. More recently, he led TFM’s Research group, with a mandate to develop innovative models that address multi-asset class and multi-horizon total portfolio challenges and to support investment decision-making for the Canadian public pension fund. The CPP fund was valued at approximately $573 billion as of March 31, 2026, and invests to help provide a foundation for financial security in retirement for more than 22 million Canadians.

“Most of my career has been dedicated to public service and to ensuring that people can retire with the benefits they have been promised,” said Walker. “I am pleased to be able to continue that work at CalPERS, and I’m thankful to Marcie and Stephen for placing their trust in me as they work to carry out the CalPERS mission.”

Walker joined CPP Investments in 2008 as a Manager within the Public Markets Investments department with a focus on global macro portfolios. Before that, Walker held positions at Barclays Global Investors and MSCI Inc. where he held roles related to quantitative investing and indexing.

He earned a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Science from Queen’s University in Canada and an MBA from INSEAD, a French business school. Walker is a Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder.

About CalPERS

CalPERS is the largest defined-benefit public pension in the U.S., with 2.4 million members. Since 1932, CalPERS has provided retirement security for state, school, and public agency employees who invest their life’s work in public service. In 1962, CalPERS expanded its services to include health benefits and now offers quality health plan coverage for more than 1.5 million members and their families.