New Jersey's Pension Hired Iris Zhao-Fiorello as Head of Private Equity and Neil Madsen as Head of Real Estate: How to Map Warm Paths Into Two New Asset Class Heads

On 4 November 2026 the New Jersey Department of the Treasury announced that its Division of Investment has hired two asset class heads. Iris Zhao-Fiorello has joined as Head of Private Equity and Neil Madsen as Head of Real Estate. Both started on 2 November. The Division's chief investment officer and director, Shoaib Khan, said both are experts in their asset classes with a wealth of knowledge and experience. For a GP, a new head of an asset class is the moment when old relationships are re-weighed and new ones are formed. The facts in the announcement are public, which means you can map your shared history with each person before you write.

What was announced

Zhao-Fiorello has more than 20 years of global institutional experience across investment management and capital formation. Immediately before joining the Division she was Head of Capital Formation and Investment Solutions at Castleforge, where she sat on the senior management team and the firm's Risk Committee. Before that she spent more than 15 years at GCM Grosvenor, where she was a Managing Director in private equity. She holds a Bachelor of Science from New York University's Stern School of Business and attended the Senior Executive Leadership Program at Stanford University. Madsen brings 35 years of institutional real estate experience. He was previously the founding partner of Madsen Advisors, and from 2011 to 2025 he served as a board director of Fife Capital. Earlier he was Executive Vice President and Head of Real Estate Private Equity at AEGON Asset Management. He is an adjunct professor at the Fordham University Real Estate Institute and was previously an adjunct professor at New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate.

The numbers

The facts that matter here are counts and years. Two seats were filled on the same day. Zhao-Fiorello's two stated employers span more than 15 years at one firm and then a senior role at another. Madsen's career runs 35 years, including 14 years from 2011 to 2025 on one board, which is our arithmetic from the stated dates. The announcement gives no assets under management for the Division, no commitment pace and no target allocations for either asset class, so we do not infer any. The same-day performance news is in our article on New Jersey's 14.82% fiscal 2026 return.

How it compares

New hires at the head of a private markets team have been a repeated theme in our coverage. When a family office hired an endowment veteran for private equity, we set out how to map warm paths into a new head. When a foundation promoted its deputy to chief investment officer, the approach was different, as our note on mapping warm paths when an LP promotes from within explains. New Jersey's hires are external and come from the fund-of-funds side and the real estate advisory side, which is why the path to each starts with where they have worked rather than with the Division itself.

The named LP

The Division of Investment is the investment arm of New Jersey's Department of the Treasury, led by Khan as chief investment officer and director. It sits among pension funds on FundLinx. The announcement says nothing about typical ticket size or about backing first-time funds, so we offer no Fund I or Fund II view.

How to map each path

This section is our advice, not guidance from the Division, and it uses only what the announcement states. For Zhao-Fiorello, start with the firms and funds that overlap with her years in private equity at GCM Grosvenor and with the capital formation work she led at Castleforge. A GP that has been through a fundraise with a fund-of-funds investor, or that has dealt with a capital formation team, will recognise how she sees a manager from both sides of the table. For Madsen, the overlap is real estate private equity, his years as a board director at Fife Capital and his advisory firm, so check whether any of your co-investors, advisers or lenders worked with him there. Then follow the general method in our guide to warm paths to LPs, and look for a warm introduction from someone who can speak to your record, not just your name. Rank the routes by strength. The strongest is a shared investor or co-investor who has committed alongside you. Next come shared advisers, placement agents or lenders, then shared employers, and last come alumni or professional-body links such as the universities and programmes named in the announcement, which are real but weaker. Use only public facts, and never ask a mutual contact for private information about either person.

What to watch next

Watch for the Division's first commitments under the new heads, for the next State Investment Council meeting, and for any announcement on who else joins the investment team. Give both new heads time to settle before asking for a meeting on a new fund. FundLinx members can see which institutions are allocating in your strategy.

FundLinx Intelligence | FundLinx.ai