Edward Mikolay

Biography

Edward Mikolay joined the Calysta Board of Directors in 2016. He is a Senior Investment Officer and Director of Private Markets for the Municipal Employee Retirement System (MERS) of Michigan. In this role, he is responsible for new investment origination and oversight of the private investment portfolio, including private equity, real assets (infrastructure, energy, real estate, and agriculture/farmland) and diversifying strategies. Mr. Mikolay is a voting member of the Portfolio Review Committee, which is responsible for all portfolio management decisions, including asset manager selection and strategic asset allocation implementation. Mr. Mikolay serves on a number of private partnership advisory boards and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Mr. Mikolay joined MERS in 2013 and has nearly 20 years of investment experience, most recently as a portfolio manager at the State of Michigan Retirement Systems (SMRS) in its Real Estate and Infrastructure Division. At SMRS, Mr. Mikolay was involved in a variety of portfolio management roles, including sourcing and underwriting new investments, overseeing dispositions and representing SMRS during partnership restructurings. He was also active on the advisory boards of many of those investments. Before his employment with SMRS, Mr. Mikolay was a real estate investment professional at CB Richard Ellis in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has also held roles in real estate acquisitions at Heitman Capital Management, a pension fund advisory firm, and Equity Residential Properties Trust (NYSE: EQR), both based in Chicago. Mr. Mikolay is a graduate of Brown University (Providence, RI) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematical economics. He also earned a Masters of Business Administration degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), with majors in Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Real Estate.

Research Interest

Informatics