Jim Davis ’99 spends plenty of time analyzing financial statements and studying the investment propositions of companies large and small. That’s only natural for a man who’s spent the last twelve years managing his own hedge fund, Woodson Capital Management. And though he has a master’s degree in accounting and an MBA from Wake Forest University, underpinning his business education and investing career is the liberal arts education he received at Davidson College, where he majored in history and minored in math, and at Woodberry Forest School.
“A liberal arts education has a lot of applicability to investing,” Jim says. “You distill your learning into a cogent thesis and put that into writing. A lot of wildly credentialed people can be very smart but unable to write a coherent sentence. The advantage to that liberal arts background is learning how to think and communicate.”
He credits David McRae and Scott Tumperi for helping advance his interest in math and teachers like Ben Hale and John Reimers for shaping his skills as a writer and thinker. The ability to think and communicate clearly has served Jim well in recent years, and his success as an investor allowed him and his wife, Meagan, to establish a tuition assistance scholarship in the Woodberry endowment.
“Woodberry made such a difference in my life. It was a great experience of discovery and exploration of different passions and pursuits,” Jim says. “Meagan and I think these opportunities should be available to anyone who’s qualified and interested to shape his future by making Woodberry his home for a few years.” Jim’s path to Woodberry was from his hometown, Greensboro, North Carolina. Though his father and paternal grandfather both graduated from Episcopal High School, Jim’s maternal grandfather was Jim Woodson, Woodberry class of 1935. When considering high schools, Jim looked at both Woodberry and Episcopal, and he decided the Forest was a better fit for him. Jim says his dad was understanding — for the most part.
“But he always sat in the Episcopal fan section when he’d come up to see The Game.” After Woodberry, Davidson, and Wake Forest, Jim became an analyst at Tiger Management, the legendary hedge fund founded by Episcopal alumnus and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate Julian Robertson. Jim arrived in 2006, just as the early tremors of the financial crisis were beginning to shake the investment industry.
“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be surrounded by so many exceptional, driven, and talented people, and a crazy time to cut your teeth in the business,” he recalls. In January 2010 he decided to start Woodson Capital, eager to measure himself and take control of a fund’s day-to-day decision-making. And to balance out the lessons he learned from his Maroon mentor, he has built ties with plenty of Woodberry Tigers in the investment industry, including Mitch Hull ’77, by serving on Woodberry’s New York Association Board and by participating in meetings of the investment committee of the board of trustees.
Now Jim and Meagan’s gift to the Woodberry endowment will establish a lasting legacy. “It’s not an accident that Woodberry leads the nation in alumni participation and giving,” he says. “The school means so much to its alumni, and we all want to do our part to give back.”
Members of the Claiborne family have been coming to Woodberry Forest for three generations, dating back to when the late Hobie Claiborne, Jr. ’41 arrived on campus from Richmond in the 1930s.