CEO Marcie Frost looks back on nearly a decade with CalPERS
.JPG "The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, headquarters buildings in downtown Sacramento are photographed on Sept. 16, 2021.")
At one point in the not-so-distant past, CalPERS had more money than it needed to cover the benefits for all present and future retirees. Then the financial crisis of 2008 hit. The country’s largest public pension fund’s assets decreased by $72 billion in value in just two years, between 2007 and 2009.
Since then, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System has slowly crawled out of that hole. CEO Marcie Frost has been at the helm for most of that recovery.
For nearly a decade, Frost has led the country’s largest public pension system, which in 2025 boosted a strong year of earnings that has pushed CalPERS’ funding status above 83%, according to the latest estimates. The retirement system hasn’t been that well funded since before 2008.
“Members are not going to be satisfied unless they have confidence that the portfolio is going to be there to pay its benefits,” Frost said in an interview. “We need to make sure that we’re focused on returns with an appropriate amount of risk, because we’re long term investors. We can’t take just short term risk to boost the number momentarily.”
When Frost first took over in 2016, CalPERS reported a funded status of 68%, meaning the retirement system had just two thirds of the money needed to cover its financial obligations. Since then, the market value of the retirement system’s assets have grown by more than $417 billion, according to figures shared by CalPERS.
In addition to building back the pension fund’s financial stability, Frost’s goal over her tenure has been to restore trust in the retirement system.
“Once you lose your reputation, it takes an incredible amount of time to regain it,” the CEO said.
CalPERS’ reputation took a major hit after Fred Buenrostro, the fund’s former CEO, admitted that he accepted more than $250,000 in payments and bribes from Alfred Villalobos, a former board member. Buenrostro was sentenced to over four years in prison in 2016.
Frost — who took over from Buenrostro’s successor, Anne Stausboll, in October 2016 — said she has been incrementally trying to build trust back with members by hiring a strong team and fostering a culture of teamwork at the pension fund. She thinks of her fellow CalPERS employees as “team members,” she said, not “staff.”
“Her leadership has put the retirement system on a much better path,” said David Miller, vice president of CalPERS board of administration.
Miller added that Frost was clear-eyed about the challenges facing the fund. He said there was a period when CalPERS didn’t have steady leadership prior to Frost, but since she took over there has been a cultural shift at the organization toward greater collaboration, particularly on the investment side.
“We’re much more focused on one team, one fund,” he said.
From typist to CEO
Frost came to CalPERS from Washington state where she served as the executive director of the state’s pension system.
Former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee appointed Frost to that role, but her journey began when her high school business teacher took her under her wing. That teacher helped Frost get a job where she could develop typing and administrative skills while still working toward her high school diploma.
Frost came from a financially disadvantaged background so the work she did for a woman-owned real estate business not only helped her to bring home some additional income for her family, but also introduced Frost to one of her first female mentors.
That experience prompted Frost to move from the small town of Forks, Washington — which Frost noted is where the fantasy series Twilight is based — to Olympia, where she got her start in state government working as a typist.
Over the next three decades, Frost worked her way from clerical worker, to human resources director, to chief of technology, until eventually the governor appointed her to his cabinet.
She wasn’t looking to leave her home state when she was scouted for CalPERS’ CEO position. But she saw the position as a new challenge.
After she was offered the job in summer of 2016, Frost had to defer moving south until October. “I needed that last month’s service credit in Washington to get to my 30 years,” she said.
Looking forward for members
Over the last nine years Frost has been with CalPERS, the pension system has changed its investment portfolio in an effort to outperform the overall market. Some of those changes include an increase in how much of the fund’s assets are in private equity.
Some stakeholders have been skeptical about the level of private equity investments CalPERS has made. Last year, a group representing retired state employees launched an independent investigation of CalPERS’ use of private equity and the fees paid to money managers.
Margaret Brown, president of the Retired Public Employees Association of California, said the fund’s recent earnings are promising, but she still has reservations about the direction of investing under Frost. Brown said her concern is that the retirement system has moved into more opaque, high-fee investments over the last decade, which exposes the fund to more risks.
“The real test is not how the fund performs now, in favorable markets, but whether the decisions that the board and the investment staff has made actually reduce long-term risk and costs during both good and bad cycles,” Brown said.
Rocco Paternoster, executive director of California State Retirees, said he and the group’s members are pleased by the viability and stability of the fund.
“We’re very happy with their stakeholders-relation department, and how responsive they are to our members,” Paternoster said in an interview. “Our members, even if they’re frustrated at first when they approach us with an issue with CalPERS, a vast majority of the time they’re very pleased with the resolution CalPERS works through on the back end.”
Moving forward, Frost said her team doesn’t try to predict the future of the markets. Rather, CalPERS analyzes various scenarios that might present themselves and develops plans on how the portfolio would need to be situated to take the best advantage of whatever might be happening.
“But the secret to all of this is the team we have in that office,” Frost said. “We have to have a place where people want to work. We have to have a (chief investment officer) that stays longer than 18 months.”
Over the last years, CalPERS has cycled through a number of chief investment officers. Of the current CIO who started in July 2024, Frost said, “We found someone in Stephen Gilmore.”
Beyond securing a stable pension fund, one of Frost’s goals has been to improve member perception and experience with their retirement system. She pointed to call center wait times that are less than four minutes and a 98% approval ratings from stakeholder surveys to demonstrate improvements to members’ experiences.
“Everything needs to be focused on, how do we get the best member experience and get people the benefit that they’re entitled to?” she said.
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 10:42 AM.
