In this session, Professor Gary will discuss: The dynamic nature of fiduciary standards and how prudence evolves with changing knowledge and circumstances. She'll explore the duty of impartiality for institutions operating in the long term, intergenerational equity concerns for university endowments, and how investors today both face systemic risks and have influence over systemic market factors in ways they did not in the 1970s. Her remarks will draw from a new chapter she co-authored with Keith Johnson and Tiffany Reeves for the Handbook of Systems Level Investing.

Susan N. Gary, Professor Emerita and formerly Orlando J. and Marian H. Hollis Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Columbia University. Before entering academia, she practiced with Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago, and with DeBandt, van Hecke & Lagae in Brussels. Professor Gary has taught trusts and estates, estate planning, estate and gift tax, nonprofit organizations, and an undergraduate course on law and families. In 2025, she taught Law and Wealth Management as a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong.

She has written and spoken about the regulation of charities, fiduciary duties including the prudent investor standard, stewardship trusts and purpose trusts as a new form of business ownership, the definition of family for inheritance purposes, donor intent in connection with restricted charitable gifts, and the use of mediation to manage conflict in the estate planning context. She served as a trustee on the University's Board of Trustees.

Professor Gary is an Academic Fellow and former Regent of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and served on the Council of the Real Property, Trust and Estate Section of the American Bar Association. She served as the Reporter for three projects of the Uniform Law Commission: the Uniform Electronic Wills Act, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, and the Model Protection of Charitable Assets Act. She was a member of the steering committee of the Intentional Endowments Network and continues to serve on its Fiduciary Investment Committee.

Significant recent articles include "The Changing Landscape of Business Succession: How and Why Purpose Trusts Matter," 18 Ohio State Bus. L. J. 41 (2024), "Best Interests in the Long Term: Fiduciary Duties and ESG Investing," 90 Univ. of Colorado L. Rev. 731 (2019), and "The Oregon Stewardship Trust: A New Type of Purpose Trust that Enables Steward-Ownership of a Business," 88 Univ. of Cincinnati L. Rev. 707 (2019). They are available on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=557612.