Morningstar Advisor - Spring 2008 - (Page 64) Undiscovered Managers First-Class Thinker By Karen Dolan To Alex Motola, who studied to become a professor of medieval history, the life of the mind needs a daily challenge. For Alex Motola, the path to becoming a portfolio manager started in medieval times. In the early 1990s, Motola was on track for an academic career as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s honors program for history. He was a triplemajor in creative writing, history, and medieval studies and thought he’d become a professor. “I had read everything written in England between the birth of Jesus Christ and King Richard’s succession,” Motola says. “Literally.” Fast-forward to 2008, and Alex Motola is sitting in his cramped office in Santa Fe, N.M., managing $3.7 billion for Thornburg Investment Management using a growth-oriented investment formula. That’s not as big a contrast as it first may seem. Motola has shifted the focus of his considerable research skills from Chaucer to the stock market. He retains an academic’s critical eye, and old study habits are hard to break. He still disdains secondary sources, for example. “I would always go back to primary source,” he says of his college studies. “I still have a strong sensitivity to going right to source documents, and I’m even suspicious of them. There usually are hidden agendas.” 64 Morningstar Advisor Spring 2008
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