Chief Investment Officer and the lead fixed-income portfolio manager Mary Ellen Stanek at Baird has been awarded Morningstar’s 2022 Outstanding Portfolio Manager prize, reports CityWireUSA. This was Stanek’s third time being nominated; she was also up for the award in 2020 and 2021. The other nominees were Hilda Applbaum of Capital Group and W. Michael Reckmeyer of Wellington Management.

Stanek manages several funds at Baird, including the Baird Aggregate Bond fund ($36.2 billion), the Baird Core Plus Bond fund ($25.9 billion), the Baird Short-Term Bond fund ($10.3 billion) and the Baird Ultra Short Bond fund ($5.9 billion). In a note, Morningstar’s Sarah Bush wrote that “Stanek has an investors-first mentality” and highlighted the strategies she and her team developed with very low fees before it was de rigueur in the industry as well as Stanek’s expansion of company resources as Baird grew its business. Bush also noted that Stanek “fostered a culture that encourages the voices of both senior collaborators and newer associates,” the article details.

Morningstar’s other top prize, for Exemplary Stewardship, was awarded to Primecap in recognition of its strategies that use a multi manager approach and its careful and intuitive portfolio managers who “have made some uncommon but exemplary choices,” Bush wrote, specifically citing Primecap’s strategy of focusing its attention on a select handful of investors rather than widening the firm’s reach. In winning the award, Primecap beat out the two other nominees: Baird and Capital Group.