(MONEY Magazine) – Some fund managers got their jobs by working their way up from the trading desk. Others kick-started their careers by going to business school. Leah Zell, manager of Acorn International, went to Harvard and got a doctorate in social and economic history.

It was time well spent. "Security analysis is just history turned inside out," she says. "In history, you take a number of data points and, knowing the outcome, come up with a story. In security analysis, you use those data points to come up with a story of how you think things will turn out. Somewhere along the way, you just have to learn to read a balance sheet."

Not surprisingly, Zell tends to think big thoughts about the foreign small-cap stocks she buys. Like her husband Ralph Wanger, manager of the Acorn Fund, Zell looks for companies that fit a handful of trends, such as outsourcing of production. "There's now more value in doing something very narrow but doing it better than anyone else," she says. Examples: Singapore's Venture Manufacturing, which assembles products for Apple, and Hong Kong's Li & Fung, which contracts out garment production for chains like The Limited. Other favorite Zell themes include the rise of European asset management and Internet consulting.

So how well has Zell's world-historical analysis translated into returns? As in the U.S., small-cap stocks abroad have struggled lately. But Acorn International is ahead of the benchmark MSCI EAFE index for the past three years. And, despite the fact that Zell's average company has boosted earnings a robust 45% over the past three years, the fund has proved to be one of the least volatile in the foreign-stock group. Not bad for a liberal arts type.

--P.R.