The Big Brain on Brad

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Cooper Nicholson hits a line drive over the left field wall to put the Tar Heels up 4-0 in their NCAA tournament opener. 

“Turn around,” Brad Briner says, pointing to the press box, where he says someone will throw T-shirts into the stands.

But the shirts never come. Briner blames the NCAA’s rules in college baseball regionals, which are intended to curb the home team’s advantages but take away some of the traditions that Heels fans enjoy during the regular season. He also blasts the NCAA for capping reserved ticket prices at $15 for these games, limiting how much money the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could take in.

For the next two hours, the Republican state treasurer’s mind wanders. He segues into a discussion of state government entities and federal policies he sees as unnecessary, including the Committee on Actuarial Valuation of Retired Employees’ Health Benefits, the Debt Affordability Advisory Committee, and tariffs the Trump administration has imposed.

“They’re economically illiterate,” Briner says of the tariffs.

As UNC extends its lead late in the game en route to an 8-0 win over VCU, the Republican treasurer can sit a bit more comfortably. His economic-driven mind, however, doesn’t come with an off switch. 

“You know why [UNC’s baseball program] loses $2 million a year?” he asks, unprompted. “It’s all the sunk costs.”

A baseball field is expensive to maintain, and, unlike the Lenovo Center—the Raleigh venue that hosts concerts, NC State men’s basketball, and the Carolina Hurricanes throughout the year—Boshamer Stadium can’t be used for many purposes.

“Asset utilization underpins cost and underpins your ability to do stuff,” Briner later reflects. “I think about it a lot more than a normal person. I realize that. But it just fascinates me.”

Briner might not think like other sports fans, but he’s not taking a typical approach to his day job either. In his first year and a half as treasurer, Briner has reduced his own authority over state investment decisions and pushed the state to experiment with AI. Some of his moves have drawn praise from officials on the other side of the political aisle.

He’s also angered state workers by raising their health insurance premiums and picked fights with healthcare executives, including opposing WakeMed’s proposed merger with Charlotte-based Atrium Health. Briner says he fears the deal will raise prices for consumers; WakeMed’s CEO sniped in response that he looked forward to “educating” the treasurer. 

Briner, 49, sees his bluntness as a notable shift from his predecessors. 

“As I’m learning in this profession [of politics], it’s fun to share great news, but you try to not share bad news,” Briner said. “I try to take a different approach just to be candid with people because we do have to make hard decisions.”

‘People Who Make Their Money’

On paper, Briner may be the most overqualified and least relatable person in statewide office. He attended swanky private schools, then climbed the rungs of finance, working for brand names like Goldman Sachs and Michael Bloomberg. He spent five figures at a charity auction to land a dinner with UNC-CH football coach Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson this year, and he lives in a $2.7 million Chapel Hill home. 

But Briner says his childhood in Dallas wasn’t so glitzy. When he was a kid, his father lost his job, so Briner’s mother took a position operating a printing press at St. Mark’s, a local private school. The role came with a key benefit: tuition fully covered for Brad and one of his three older brothers. His family thought he wouldn’t reach his potential at Wallace Elementary School, which Briner says had metal detectors at the time, so they took the opportunity.

He recalls his mom often returning home with ink stains on her hands.

“When you become a parent, you realize the sacrifices your parents made for you and the emotions that they probably went through in doing so,” Briner said. “I can’t imagine how humiliating that was for my mom.”

Briner says he also struggled to identify with the students of wealthier backgrounds. His dad landed on his feet around 1984 and became an investor. The family would watch Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser over dinner. From that early introduction to investing, Briner knew he wanted to work in finance. 

He said his family’s financial hardships were the catalyst for his career: “It came from the fact that we had no money. That’ll do it for you.” 

“You have to be incredibly aggressive with people who are incredibly aggressive with you.”

Treasurer Brad Briner

Briner got a financial aid package to attend a New Hampshire boarding school, Phillips Exeter Academy, which is often a pipeline for Ivy League institutions. But Briner says he knew where he wanted to go to college on February 28, 1995, when he managed to get in the Dean Dome to watch UNC-CH host Wake Forest in men’s basketball following a campus tour during his senior year of high school. While Tim Duncan and the Deacs narrowly defeated the Heels 79-70, the camaraderie on campus left Briner with a clear impression of where he was meant to be. When he secured a Morehead Scholarship, he didn’t hesitate to accept it. 

Bill Watts, who now works in the treasurer’s office, has known Briner since they pledged the Sigma Chi fraternity in 1995. They became roommates, and Watts was best man at Briner’s wedding. 

He said he looks back fondly on the days the two spent fishing, eating wings at a sports bar, and cheering for opposing football teams (Briner remains a diehard Cowboys fan, while Watts roots for the Panthers). Watts said Briner’s constant curiosity drew people to him.

“He’s extremely intelligent, and he works extremely hard,” Watts said. “He just has this intellectual curiosity. That hasn’t changed. In college, he was a natural leader.”

After getting his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1999, Briner worked as an associate for the UNC Management Company, which oversees the UNC System’s endowments, and then as managing director for Morgan Creek Capital in Chapel Hill. He earned his master’s degree in 2006 from Harvard Business School.

“I don’t love people who inherit their money,” Briner said. “I love people who make their money.”

Amanda Upton, who worked for Briner at Morgan Creek, said she heard through the grapevine that Briner would leave a chair in his college dorm bathroom so he could read at 5 a.m. without waking up his roommates. Briner confirmed the rumor, with one caveat: “There was no chair.”

Upton recalls Briner as a stickler for keeping staff on task and on schedule. At times, that meant disciplining a younger and more impulsive sales team that would try to drive up their numbers. The environment felt like a cross between The Wolf of Wall Street and The Office. 

“He totally lost his mind.”

Amanda Upton, a former coworker, recounts hiding an irritating item in Briner’s office

“You have to be incredibly aggressive with people who are incredibly aggressive with you,” Briner said. “It’s the only language they speak. Trying to be nice to people who will run you over just ends up with you being run over. You have to push back very hard to be very clear about what is and is not appropriate as a firm.”

To loosen up Briner, Upton and others resorted to gag gifts and pranks. One particularly embarrassing present for Briner was a coffee mug featuring his smiling face and an out-of-context quote of his that read, “I make capitalism work.”

Another time, Upton hid fake cockroaches in cereal boxes. When Briner learned of the prank, he insisted Upton pay the $1,500 the firm spent on a pest control company. And one April Fools’ Day, Upton hid Annoy-o-trons throughout Briner’s office, which would make electronic noises at random intervals. “He totally lost his mind,” Upton said.

Briner has remained a mentor to her and other former employees. “Brad made sure we were getting what we wanted out of our career,” said Upton, who now works for an investment company in Pennsylvania.

Briner left Morgan Creek after seven years when, he said, a senior partner concluded the firm wouldn’t consider consolidating with Apollo Global Management, a giant asset management firm that could give the substantially smaller Chapel Hill operation wider reach. 

“To me, as a business guy, that was essentially throwing in the towel,” Briner said.

So in 2011, he joined Willett Advisors, a New York-based firm that helps manage Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets.

Getting to Government

Sitting in Boshamer Stadium, Briner’s wife, Cheryl, doesn’t recall any family conversation before Briner decided to run for treasurer. When he has an idea, he acts quickly. So on the eve of the 2023 candidate filing deadline, he decided to make the leap to pursue public office.

He said the treasurer’s position has fascinated him since he wrote a case study in business school on the state’s retirement system. The idea of overseeing it didn’t enter his mind until 2016, but it wasn’t a serious consideration. 

But for more than a decade, he had been packing his bags on Sunday afternoons to commute to New York and returning to Chapel Hill on Fridays. He was missing out on events and milestones with Cheryl and their four children.

“I missed a lot of their lives, and that is a choice we made,” Briner said. “It’s not a choice that is without drawbacks, but eyes wide open. I don’t regret it, but it was one we were looking to change. [The run for treasurer] represented the ability to do that in a way that was satisfying.”

After speaking with GOP strategist Jim Blaine, an old friend and member of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, Briner entered the race. He said he’d be more aggressive with the state’s pension fund than Treasurer Dale Folwell, who wasn’t seeking reelection. Briner said roughly 45% of the pension fund was in stocks and 55% in bonds and low-risk investments when he took office. About 65% of the fund is now in stocks and 35% in bonds. 

“I’m not advocating gambling,” Briner told Business NC during the primary. “I’m talking about taking smart, sensible steps to achieve the 6.5% to 7% annual returns that the system requires.”

Briner won the primary, despite some grumbling from Republicans about his ties to Bloomberg and his decision in 2020 to switch his party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated.

Briner told The Assembly he’s long identified as a conservative and only switched parties to vote for Bloomberg, who was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination at the time.

“He’s the only Democrat I’ve ever voted for,” Briner said. State records show he re-registered as a Republican in 2023.

Briner takes the criticism of his ties to Bloomberg in stride. He noted Bloomberg wasn’t thrilled to be losing him to a run for state treasurer. On his office shelf, Briner keeps a watercolor his niece made depicting him as the billionaire’s puppet— a mocking tribute to a social media ad a primary opponent ran against him.

“Bloomberg wants to control your pension plan,” it says. The graphic rests near an “I Suck at Investing” plaque Briner got for losing an investing contest several years ago. 

Taking Care of Business

One of Briner’s first moves after he took office last year was to push GOP lawmakers to shift powers the treasurer has long had over investment decisions to a new state Investment Authority. Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously.

“It’s rare that somebody comes into a new office and says, ‘I want you to pass a law taking away some of my authority and diffusing it among a bigger group of people.’”

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein

Briner’s request was unorthodox, bucking a pattern of Republican officials seeking to entrench their party’s political power rather than delegate it out. When The Assembly asked Democratic Gov. Josh Stein what most stands out to him about working with Briner, he cited the treasurer’s push for the bill, which let the governor appoint one of five members of the Investment Authority.

“Brad is an exceptional, thoughtful guy,” Stein said. “It’s rare that somebody comes into a new office and says, ‘I want you to pass a law taking away some of my authority and diffusing it among a bigger group of people.’ To have one person making the investment decision of a $100 billion pension fund, that’s not wise. Brad recognized that.”

Briner announced in June that the pension fund reached a record-high $148.3 billion, gaining more than $25 billion since he took office. By the end of the month, it grew to $149 billion. At a Council of State meeting, he poked fun at himself over one missed investment opportunity: partial state ownership of the Carolina Hurricanes.

The treasurer told The Assembly he spoke with Canes owner Tom Dundon over the phone on Friday nights late last year about the pension fund potentially taking a stake in the hockey team. “Tom loves to call at odd hours,” Briner said. 

But state officials determined that it was too risky.

As Briner gave a reporter a tour of his office, his chief of staff popped in to mockingly hand the treasurer a Canes jersey.

But it hasn’t been all smiles lately. Briner has faced backlash over the cost of state employees’ health insurance. Under the new state budget, most state workers will see a 3% pay increase, which is less than the 3.5% annual inflation rate in June. On top of that, earlier this month the State Health Plan board announced a 5% premium increase for most members. The state treasurer chairs the 10-person health plan board.

Ardis Watkins, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, labeled the premium increase “wrong-headed” during a board meeting.

“A 3% raise for most state employees is not going to cover inflation for this year and much less the increase y’all gave them for their health plan last year, and then what I assume will be an increase for them all this year,” Watkins said.

Briner says changes are necessary to chip away at a $507 million deficit the State Health Plan had when he entered office. He blamed that on his predecessor, Folwell.

“He kept premiums flat for eight years, which was great for a lot of state employees,” Briner said. “The cost of that was running out of reserves.”

Folwell said Briner “inherited a terrific staff, and like me, some enormous mathematical challenges associated with runaway healthcare costs for those that teach, protect, and serve taxpayers like them.”

An Education

Briner and WakeMed’s top executive, Donald Gintzig, have engaged in a war of words over the treasurer’s opposition to the proposed merger with Atrium.

WakeMed says the deal will allow the company to upgrade facilities, improve patient care, create 3,300 new jobs, and accelerate research. Briner, meanwhile, says it will reduce competition and raise costs for state workers and the State Health Plan. While healthcare costs are in the treasurer’s purview, Briner’s reaction was notably forceful. 

“We have a job, and that is to make the State Health Plan solvent,” he told The Assembly. “This hurts that. So how can I not be opposed?”

Gintzig told The Assembly that Briner and state Auditor Dave Boliek, who raised similar criticisms, weren’t looking at the industry from his vantage point. “They’re very good people and very smart people, but they haven’t lived what we have lived in the process that we’ve gone through and the headwinds that we see us facing,” Gintzig said.

Gintzig has also suggested future runs for higher elected office may be driving their opposition.

“I’d be surprised if they don’t have higher political aspirations,” he told Business NC. “I understand policy, and I have no political aspirations. I have one goal, and that’s to improve care in our community.”

Briner called the criticism “amusing” and said he’s happy in his current role and has no plans to run for any other office. “He’s not used to people questioning him, and he doesn’t like it,” he said of Gintzig.

In May, the Wake County Board of Commissioners delayed an initial vote on the proposal for 90 days, but the debate will likely heat up again when the pause ends early next month.

Briner has tangled with Atrium leaders, as well, over a four-tiered structure the State Health Plan is implementing in 2027. State workers and retirees will have lower copays and out-of-pocket costs if they use “preferred providers” designated by the state.

Atrium has complained publicly because it was listed as a “non-preferred provider,” where state workers will face much higher costs—which could discourage plan members from seeking care at Atrium hospitals. The health system said in a statement that it was “never engaged to compete for the full scope of services included in the program.”

Briner’s office and the State Health Plan responded with a lengthy news release and detailed infographic laying out a timetable of conversations state leaders said they had with Atrium executives, including Briner meeting with Atrium’s CEO and CFO in May and June.

“We appreciate they have just realized the gravity of their lack of communication with us, but we have in fact tried to get them to be part of our team multiple times over the last year,” Briner and the SHP wrote.

On Monday, Briner’s office shared that he and State Health Plan officials met with Atrium Health leaders in Raleigh for a “constructive” meeting and that all sides anticipate “providing an update within a few weeks.”

The Answer

Briner sees the coming years as a period for necessary change, both technologically and educationally. 

He’s embraced artificial intelligence, launching a 12-week pilot program with OpenAI, N.C. Central University, the State and Local Government Finance Division—which monitors the financial wellbeing of more than 1,100 local government units and public authorities—and the state’s Unclaimed Property Division, which operates a database trying to find the owners of $1.7 billion in bank accounts, insurance policy proceeds, and contents of safe deposit boxes that have been abandoned.

The pilot results showed a 10% increase in productivity. He noted the pilot program identified millions of dollars in unclaimed property and generated workflow improvements.

Briner says he uses AI to write speeches and create presentations. “I always tell people that I don’t write speeches anymore because ChatGPT is so much better at that than me, and maybe that’s a referendum on my ability, but it is pretty amazing.”

He’s asked his employees to use AI to save time sifting through audited public financial statements that towns and counties provide, with safeguards in place to avoid private information being used.

“We now have access to a professional-grade model that cannot train on our data,” Briner said.

Briner sees himself as fixing past decisions he thinks hamstring the state’s finances. But he also wants North Carolinians to better manage their own money.

He hopes to bolster financial literacy through his monthly Finance Fridays newsletter. Briner writes an introductory column often touching on life lessons and recent news developments. The most recent newsletter highlighted Trump Accounts, tax-deferred investment accounts for children that Congress created in 2025. Each of Briner’s newsletters end with brief quizzes, one geared toward teenagers and one for adults.

In April, Briner announced a new high school internship program, which will include one-on-one mentoring with treasurer’s office leaders, a day of shadowing at Fidelity Investments, and curriculum development for new financial literacy clubs in schools. The financial clubs are expected to use his Finance Fridays newsletter as a model for fostering discussion and activities.

Sitting in his office recently, reflecting on his own upbringing, he says he wants to use this position to give the state’s residents the tools to avoid similar money troubles.

“Financial literacy is the answer,” he says.