American Century Championship Lab Coat Presentation
THE MODERATOR: We're joined by our 2026 American Century Championship winner, Mardy Fish, here along with Michael Turner, head of Avantis Distribution for American Century Investments.
We have a special ceremony today in recognition of American Century's philanthropic corporate structure that allows the company to direct 40 percent of dividends to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. This incredibly unique model has resulted in a donation of more than $2 billion since 2000.
MICHAEL TURNER: Thank you very much. On behalf of American Century Investments, I could not be more proud to present you with the first-ever lab coat for winning the 2026 American Century Championship.
MARDY FISH: Super fortunate and happy and honored to be invited back every year. It's my favorite week of the year. My whole family's favorite week of the year. We really appreciate American Century. We really appreciate NBC Sports.
I forgot out there on the green to give a shout out to the agronomy team at Edgewood. The golf course was in beautiful condition. The greens were beautiful. They were tough today, the conditions were tough today. And just really thankful to have the first one of these on.
Q. Michael, how did the idea come about to mimic the Masters by awarding a lab coat to the winner today?
MICHAEL TURNER: I wish I had come up with this myself. I didn't. It was born out of one of our brand initiatives for the tournament this year. If you noticed our TV commercials, we had a gentleman in a lab coat. We thought it just made perfect sense to tie it back into our unique ownership structure with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.
Q. How many scientists actually work at the Stowers Institute, and what is the research focused on?
MICHAEL TURNER: I'm glad you asked about the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Contextually, for everyone, it's a million-square-foot facility based in Kansas City Missouri. We have over 500 scientists who have come over the globe to KC. There's 20 individual labs that have distinct initiatives. And all of these folks, day in and day out, they come to the institute and they research cures for all types of gene-based diseases. To name a couple: Cancer, dementia, diabetes, Alzheimer's and the like.
Q. Are there any other asset management companies that kind of boast a similar structure?
MICHAEL TURNER: We're not familiar with any other asset managers who have an operating model quite like we do at American Century Investments. And frankly, expanding outside of asset managers, there's no other company that we're aware of.
We really think that we live in this universe of one, and right at the intersection between wealth and health.
Q. What are you going to do with the coat? Are you going to wear it all year until you come back?
MARDY FISH: I am. I will wear it every day.
Q. Does American Century's corporate structure attract the philanthropic avenues -- do you think it attracts more business?
MICHAEL TURNER: What we do at American Century, we are a global investment manager, and our mission day in and day out is to help our clients reach their investment goals and objectives. The way in which we do that is we have three distinct brands, American Century Investments, Avantis Investors, as well as Income America, and no matter which brand you invest in with us, we do direct 40 percent of our dividends to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, as a byproduct of our really unique ownership structure. When we think about clients and their investment decisions they have different levels of uniqueness to them, but in a competitive situation, having a unique ownership structure like we do certainly does provide a nice tailwind.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports