If you fill a room with private equity professionals, chances are that you won’t find many faces of women and people of color. A pair of partners at McGuireWoods hope a new initiative they launched in January can help change that. Securities department chair Greg Kilpatrick and tax and employee benefits department chair Gerald Thomas created Black Professionals in Private Equity and Finance (BPE) to host networking opportunities, panel discussions and webinars for Black workers in the financial sector.
“We wanted to make a place where folks could meet each other, share experiences, form bonds and do business together,” Kilpatrick said. “One of the benefits we hope will come is that more capital will go to minority-owned businesses.”
The initiative comes amid a broader focus on diversity in the private equity industry. Last week The Carlyle Group, represented by Latham & Watkins, announced it had secured a private equity credit facility for $4.1 billion that it called the largest-ever ESG-linked credit facility in the United States and the first to focus exclusively on advancing board diversity.
Source: Reuters
By Arriana McLymore
