NCPERS, University of Chicago Announce NextGen Pension Competition

On August 18, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems will ask the public policy students at the University of Chicago to showcase their best ideas for the future of public pensions. 

NCPERS and the Center of Municipal Finance, housed at the university’s Harris School of Public Policy, are partnering to offer the NCPERS-Harris School Pension Lab: NextGen Competition. It will take place as part of the NCPERS Public Pension Funding Forum, which will convene public pension professionals at the University of Chicago’s David Rubenstein Forum next week. 

Two teams of students from the Harris School will present proposals they developed in class this past spring. Each proposal offers policy solutions that would generate revenue in Chicago, through a framework for improving the fiscal health of defined benefit plans. 

The competition has paired students with three leaders of Illinois-based pension funds, who mentored the students this summer and helped them refine their pitches for Monday’s event. 

The mentors are Mary Cahill, director of business operations and legislative affairs at the Illinois State Board of Investments; Brent Lewandowski, executive director of the Cook County Pension Fund; and Dipesh Mehta, executive director and chief investment officer at ISBI. 

The initiative was born out of the Harris Policy Innovation Challenge, a program the University of Chicago initiated in the 2023-24 academic year. The first iteration of HPIC encouraged students to find solutions to Chicago’s $35 billion unfunded pension system. 

“This NextGen competition is the culmination of conversation between [NCPERS and the University of Chicago] about … how NCPERS could bring realism and real world application to the [Innovation Challenge],” says Hank Kim, the NCPERS executive director. “We’re thrilled to partner with the University of Chicago and the Harris School … and we can’t wait to hear from the teams competing.” 

Students will be judged by three Illinois-based industry experts: Tim Blair, executive director of the State Retirement Systems of Illinois; Tiffany Junkins, executive director of the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago; and Kevin Reichart, the executive director of the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago. 

During the competition, each team will have 20 minutes to present their ideas. The presentations and accompanying briefs will be evaluated by both the judges and the event’s attendees—with each group contributing 50% weight to the teams’ final scores—based on the following criteria: 

• Financial visibility and impact (30%); 

• Implementation feasibility (30%); 

• Risk management and sustainability (30%); and 

• Professional quality and presentation. 

The winning team will receive a $5,000 honorarium and a research internship with NCPERS, culminating in a published research paper. 

“Simply put, the ideas that our students generate here are ones that policy makers should take seriously,” said Justin Marlowe, research professor at the Harris School and director of the Center for Municipal Finance, in a statement. “Going forward, we hope to expand on this work with NCPERS, offering students fresh opportunities to apply their research and analytical skills, while developing a deeper appreciation of the career opportunities in public retirement systems.”