Institutional Investor is proud to recognize remarkable investors for their achievements and outstanding leadership in pioneering diversity and inclusion efforts within their investment teams and with their external managers.
Working with our Institutional Investor Institute and Alternative Investor Institute team, Advisory Board members as well as with outside experts, we celebrate and share some of the impact peers in the industry have created pushing us forward.
It is with great honor that we celebrate this movement of influential allocators who have the passion and vision to implement change and to advance discussions around diversity, equity, inclusion and access.
We are pleased to announce this year’s selection of Awardees. The following 12 thought leaders of our investment management community have shared with us how their focused, intentional actions have helped the industry move closer to diversity, equity and inclusion.
This year we are honoring 12 thought leaders
*Presented in an alphabetical order by fund name
As Head of Portfolio Management in Bank of America’s Chief Investment Office, which has an average tenure of 17 years, Joe has created a robust culture by maintaining a practice of hiring internally. Since 2020, he has personally hosted an annual meeting about ally ship alongside other industry leaders, talking about the underrepresented community help each other that collectively we’re stronger than as individual
As the first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at CalPERS, Marlene has developed a robust framework to look at the public pension’s role model as the largest health provider in the country. Since she assumed the role in 2021, she has nurtured an internal and external culture of inclusivity, incorporating the use of data to reinforce the fund’s history and making sure that the outcomes that our members receive are the ones that we would expect to see
As CIO of Children's Minnesota since 1995, Sue Slocum has spearheaded an inclusive culture where 2 years ago, the pediatric institution’s C Suite had no people of color, and now it has 30%. Among her proudest achievements is her own, new team, including a diversity and inclusion senior director, women and people of color, in service of providing children with the best and most equal healthcare.
Angela has been Director of Investment Staff and Diverse Manager Equity since 2020, during which it changed its name from Colony Consulting. Since she first joined the consultant in 2016, she has seen a realignment of its values, making sure that its managers have an equity ownership stake of more than 50%, in not using the word “minority” in its writing in order to give diverse managers a fair shot, and surveying all of its managers by race, asset class, geography, gender, and ethnicity.
As Executive Director and CIO since 2004 – and the first African American and first female to run the fund – Cheryl has taken a holistic look at her portfolio to see if there are any asset classes where the public fund doesn’t have diverse managers. Following the Global Financial Crisis, she worked with her board, which is 75% female and 75% diverse, and built the Next Generation Manager Program, to recognize diverse managers’ performance against their own benchmarks and to allow nondiverse managers to promote their diversity policy.
As Deputy CIO and Director of Finance since 2010, Carol has grown the manager base exponentially from 12 to 32 managers, specifically with a mind to hiring women-owned or diverse-owned broker-dealers. On her team, she actively promotes all members of her team to make sure everyone is being heard, which she applies to hiring managers whose teams, including different cultures and ethnicities and a target of 30% of female-owned portfolio managers by 2030.
As Managing Director at Kresge Foundation, Venus has continued the mission of founder Sebastian Kresge “to promote wellbeing of mankind,” which now makes $160 million in grants each year. Since she assumed the role in 2021, she has implemented an effort to make the investment team as diverse and inclusive as possible, set the goal to have 25% of our U.S.-based assets invested with women and people of color by 2025, and increasing engagement with diverse members via conference engagement, GP hiring, and peer conversation.
Read Phillip's story here: Helping Build That Pipeline
As the Senior Director and Head of Emerging Manager at the Teachers Retirement System of Texas since 2019, Kirk has designed a manager survey to get more information on DEI, toward a more cooperate culture, in his manager selection and among his peers. Internally, his own organization has fostered inclusion by introducing diversity including the Hispanic, Latino Network; the Caregivers’ Network; and the Black Employee Network, which he personally started.
Read Sims's story here: Opportunity Rising
Since he joined the Teachers' Retirement System of Illinois in 2019 as Senior Investment Officer of the Diverse and Emerging Managers program, Jose has designed a system to look at diversity across three layers – ownership, leadership, and total workforce – to ensure not only diverse numbers, but an inclusive culture including retention, fair distribution of economics, and a process for due diligence. To date, the fund has established that 20% of all exposure has to be with diverse and female minority managers, supported by its annual survey of its managers and proprietary platform where managers can make updates to the make-up of its staff on a live basis.
Read Gonzales' story here: Being an Agent of Change
In that time since Carlos joined as Portfolio Manager in 2014 to CIO in 2021, the foundation has achieved a 90% level of diversity in its board and 45% level of diversity over the last 12 years. Since 2018, Carlos has implemented 2 programs including, first survey managers around recruiting, cultural belong, fair promotion, and influence – and second, collaborating with 5 other firms, he has a grant program to introduce diversity into firms via a grant program, where he works with a firm wants to be on the diversity front and an execution plan, which has now been adopted by 450 C-Suite executives and to over 30 investment firms, who collectively have $1.5 trillion in assets under management.
As Chief Investment Officer of the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, Angela has increased the percentage of total assets from 21.7% to 25.5%, or $12.5 billion, over the last year. In the investment industry, IMRF has been a leader in encouraging diversity, equity, and inclusion, including a diverse membership, a diverse board of trustees, diverse staff, and diverse investment team, which in turn Angela ensures is represented in its managers, by minorities, women, and persons of disability always have access to opportunities to kind of conduct business with IMRF.
