Mike Sylvanus

Michael Sylvanus

Senior Consultant

B.A., Engineering, Harvard College
B.S., Environmental Engineering, Harvard College


Mike Sylvanus is a senior consultant for Russell Investments’ Americas institutional business. Mike provides advice to large institutional fund clients on investment policy and strategy, asset allocation, asset class structure, manager selection and performance measurement and analytics. For more than 17 years Mike was a senior member of Russell Investments’ research and strategy group where his primary responsibility was to develop and interpret asset/liability models to help institutional clients determine the appropriate allocation of assets. He worked closely with the consultants and officially joined the consulting group in July 2007.

Prior to his role as senior research analyst, Mike was a member of Russell Investments’ fixed income manager research group where he evaluated money managers in the quantitative, long term and broad market sectors. In 1990, he moved into Russell Investments’ research and development area to assist in the development of asset allocation modeling for the Russell-Yasuda model, which was awarded the 1993 Franz Edelman award for commercial applications of management science. Since then, Mike has taken part in major projects in which Russell Investments has developed models for several prominent Japanese financial institutions.

Before joining Russell Investments, Mike was a senior analyst with the Cambridge-based Ryan Financial Strategy Group, where he was responsible for analyzing mortgage-backed securities and developing software for that purpose. Before that, he was a senior analyst/engineer with Meta Systems Inc. Mike’s role with Meta Systems was to examine the economic impact of water quality regulations on several industries, including organic chemicals, pulp and paper and pesticides. Mike’s group developed and utilized operations research models for these studies.

Mike’s contributions outside Russell Investments include involvement with the Tacoma YMCA, where he works with teenagers and helps develop and maintain computers and software. He is a member of the Tacoma branch of The Mountaineers, where he has served as a board member and as chair for the intermediate climbing course.


The impact of interest rate expectations on LDI strategy

August 2020
"LDI is about the management of interest rate exposure and changes in the environment can at times be so significant that the strategic picture is affected."