Dean Takahashi is Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Management and Executive Director of the Carbon Containment Lab, an independent, non-profit organization that develops and enables innovative solutions to containing greenhouse gases to combat climate change. Launched in February 2024, the Lab is continuing much of the work begun at the Yale Carbon Containment Lab that Dean founded in January 2020.
Prior to his work on climate solutions, Dean served as Senior Director of the Yale Investments Office for more than 3 decades with broad responsibilities for the University’s Endowment and other investment assets. Dean joined the Investments Office in 1986 and over Dean’s tenure, the Yale Endowment was one of the world’s top performing funds. The Endowment grew from $1.5 billion to more than $30 billion, and annual spending from the fund increased from $50 million to $1,400 million.
Together with Yale’s Chief Investment Officer David Swensen, Dean helped develop and pioneer the widely emulated approach to investing often called the Yale Model. Many CIOs of leading universities and foundations started their careers and trained at the Yale Investments Office under David and Dean’s mentorship. Dean has taught at Yale for more than 30 years as a Lecturer in Economics and Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Management. In 2018, he received the Merton J. Peck Prize for distinction and excellence in teaching in the Department of Economics.
Dean received his MPPM in 1983 from the Yale School of Organization and Management and his BA magna cum laude with distinction in Economics in 1980 from Yale College where he was scrumhalf of the 1978 Ivy League champion rugby team. Dean is a fellow of Berkeley College and a member of the Kresge Foundation investment committee.
