Gloria Gil serves as the Senior Investment Officer in Treasury’s Real Estate division, where she manages a $13.7B real estate portfolio. Recently named to Pensions & Investments’ "2025 Influential Women in Institutional Investing", Gloria brings over three decades of expertise to her role. She is also a passionate advocate for the next generation. As the co-founder of Filipinos in Institutional Real Estate (FIIRE), an international mentoring and networking organization, Gloria is dedicated to supporting young professionals in finance.

What is your professional background and what brought you to this role?

I started in Chicago in the accounting department at Aetna collecting insurance premium payments for real estate. In the years that followed, I worked as a controller, property manager and facilities manager.

When we moved to Los Angeles after college, I became the asset manager for TCW Group overseeing the CalSTRS portfolio. When the CalSTRS Investment Officer moved to LACERA, they asked me to apply as Investment Officer. I was there for 10 years and grew the separate account portfolio from $1B to $3B.

UC Regents hired me to start the real estate asset class from scratch and over the 15 years I was there, it grew to a $5.5B portfolio. I retired from UC Regents when COVID hit and became a partner for a GP investing in Europe and Japan only.

After two years, the headhunter who placed me at UC Regents called about the Oregon State Treasury position. At first, I wasn’t interested but after interviewing and meeting 10 senior members of the team, the rest is history. I have been here for 2.5 years and manage a $13.7B real estate portfolio.

You recently spoke with Treasurer Steiner to the Andover Women in Finance Club and you co-founded Filipinos in Institutional Real Estate (FIIRE), a mentoring and networking organization. What drives your commitment to helping young professionals, and what is the most important message you want them to hear about a career in finance?

My hero is my mom, who raised four kids by herself as a dressmaker in Manila. She migrated to Chicago for a better life, filed for divorce and remarried an Englishman who adopted all of us. At 15 years old, I had a full scholarship and was an electrical engineering major in Manila. With two years of college completed, we arrived in Chicago but couldn’t afford the college tuition so I had to start working.

My first job at Aetna in real estate accounting exposed me to the world of finance. Draper & Kramer paid for my college education, but it took me 10 years to work my way through night school. In that time, my mentors were all white males, no women or minorities. So, my way of giving back was co-founding FIIRE, which now has 400+ members in 10 cities in the US plus Canada and Manila. I never imagined it would grow internationally.

As I am now in the final years of my professional career, I want to help young professionals, especially women and minorities, through mentoring, networking, and education (FIIRE’s mission).

You never know where you would end up, as my journey shows. I was blessed with a pivot in my life to real estate (not a victim) which I didn’t know at the time would be most rewarding and that I would excel in it too. Life is an evolution sometimes not a straight-line trajectory from one place to another so be open to explore what life has to offer. Find what you love to do so it is fun not work, and the money will follow.

How do you approach investment decisions in the current market conditions?

In every job I have had, the first question I always ask is: “What is the role of real estate in the portfolio?”

Real estate is a diversifier with greater income portion in returns. Hence, investments should be in private equity structures with mostly stabilized assets, and separately managed, which I have been implementing since 1996 at LACERA.

We already have a good roster of existing managers, so now we are more focused on filling the gaps in the portfolio. We look at which property types are attractive given the market conditions – still focused on industrial, multi-family, and grocery-anchored retail, but adding alternative sectors that are based on demographic demands (senior housing, student housing, manufactured housing, medical office).

We believe these assets offer better risk-adjusted returns in the long run and are more resilient during good and bad times. We are also expanding our international investments in Western Europe and Developed Asia.

What book, podcast, or other resource(s) has influenced your thinking recently?

The book that has influenced me lately is “Atomic Habits.” Little changes in your life when done consistently eventually lead to something amazing or profound. I have never looked at things this way, and it is working for me.