It’s an exciting time to be working with the private equity industry. While the events of the last 18 months have presented unexpected and unparalleled challenges, many private equity firms have proven to be adept at navigating these challenges and are well-positioned for the future.
Whether it’s record-high fundraising numbers, new deals and partnerships, sustainability initiatives or diversity projects, there is a wealth of enthusiasm among private equity professionals to grow and improve this industry.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Our focus at Jensen Partners is on identifying and placing high-quality candidates at private equity firms around the world, and to support the industry’s efforts to improve workforce diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). We recognise how important diverse talent is to the success of any business, and we are committed to working directly with private equity firms and other industry organizations to address the DEI challenge head-on.
On the recruitment side, we have built a custom methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative insights to source and place the best candidates at leading private equity firms. We also continue to refine a database that tracks the moves of professionals across the alternative investment industry. To date, we have collected verifiable demographic data on 25,000 investment and distribution professionals, including 8,000 who identify as having a diverse background, working at more than 700 alternative investment firms.
We also recently launched a proprietary platform called DiversityMetrics that allows alternative asset managers to quantify and qualify the intersectionality of race, class and gender across their workforce. For private equity firms. these data insights can be used to build diverse candidate pipelines, benchmark DEI metrics, follow DEI best practices and, ultimately, drive meaningful progress toward DEI objectives.
We make much of this data publicly available in our quarterly newsletters, consistent with our mission to help alternative investment firms meet their DEI goals. And we are working on other ways to improve the quality and quantity of our data, with several projects in progress aimed at analysing how the largest private equity firms are addressing DEI across the workforce. For example, we are looking at ways to incorporate LGBTQIA+ status, disability status and veteran status as part of our demographic data on private equity and other alternative investment professionals.
Our conversations with professionals both inside and outside the private equity industry show that these conversations about DEI are only beginning. While attention on these issues is near an all-time high—in large part due to recent protests against racial injustice—we think private equity firms are still at an early stage in their journeys to building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce. We believe that as more data becomes available and as more evidence of best practices becomes available, private equity firms will ratchet up their commitment.
Defining issues
Diversity is only one of the defining issues facing the private equity industry in the months and years ahead. Other areas of focus for private equity firms may include expanding to new geographies and sectors, raising capital from retail and high-net-worth investors, and exploring ESG and impact investing strategies. Each focus area is dependent on finding and utilising the right talent, an activity that the entire Jensen Partners team prides itself on. 
Sasha Jensen, Founder and CEO, Jensen Partners
Sasha Jensen is Founder and CEO of Jensen Partners, an executive search and corporate advisory firm focused on lternative asset management. As CEO, Jensen leads a team of recruitment specialists and data scientists dedicated to sourcing, recruiting and placing capital raising and investment professionals. She has been described as “the most successful executive recruiter for asset gatherers” by institutional investors. Jensen has also been an outspoken advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion in financial services, and she recently launched DiversityMetrics™, an industry-first technology platform for measuring, reporting and improving DEI.
