AlbaCore Capital Group, Aspect Capital, Balyasny Asset Management, BNP Paribas, Bridgewater Associates, Buzzacott, Citadel, Citadel Securities, D. E. Shaw & Co, Lone Pine Capital, Millennium Management, Northern Trust, Point72, Schulte Roth & Zabel, Sculptor Capital Management, Simmons & Simmons, Taconic Capital, Tudor Investment Corporation and Wellington have featured before. These firms continue to hire and promote lots of women into senior roles.

Eighteen of the fifty women are clearly investment professionals, though some of the thirty-two with typically non-investment job titles also have significant input into the investment process. Several senior accountants and lawyers are deeply involved at both firm and fund level, sitting on investment committees that sign off on new investments and helping with structuring and monitoring investments. Lawyers in law firms and general counsel are integral to some activist and distressed strategies, and of course litigation is an investment strategy in its own right, illustrated here with Sarah Johnson of D.E. Shaw & Co. 

The dearth of women studying and working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) is often lamented, but we have found them in operational and investment roles. Three women in senior technology roles are Gemma Hagen of Aspect Capital, Martha Lam of Lone Pine Capital and Sarah Mulholland of Bridgewater Associates. Additionally, other women such as Dr. Ying Xu of D.E. Shaw studied computer science before moving into investment. On the quantitative investment side, we feature five investment professionals: Dr. Ying Xu; Dr. Kathryn Kaminski of AlphaSimplex Group; Dr. Marie Legendre of CFM; Dr. Iulia Schpak of Tudor Capital Europe and Julie Tereschenko of Tudor Investment Corporation. Of course, many of the discretionary fundamental managers featured in the report are also making extensive and increasing use of quantitative tools.

Most of the hedge funds in this year’s report are managing billions, but we do also have a few firms running a few hundred million and one running tens of millions. Three firms have launched within the past five years namely Vantage Rock, McGinty Road Partners, and Picea Oriental Asset Management. Some other smaller and newer hedge fund managers founded or co-founded by women might feature in our Tomorrow’s Titans report of rising star portfolio managers, which is exclusively focused on investment professionals.

Whilst most of the featured US women are based on the East Coast, we do feature women based in Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Newport Beach, CA. In Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are the main hubs, and some women based there also lead global responsibilities for their firms. The report is more geographically diverse in terms of where women grew up: beyond the US, Canada, Europe, China and India, two came from Japan, two from Africa, two from Ukraine, one from Latvia, and one from Lebanon. The European based women featuring in this year’s report come from London, Paris, Stockholm and Dublin.

ESG is an increasing priority for many women in the report, at firm and fund levels. A growing number of hedge funds are developing their own ways of integrating ESG into the investment process. Avery Sheffield avails of Rockefeller Asset Management’s proprietary ESG research. Diana Amoa of Kirkoswald is launching an ESG emerging markets fixed income strategy using her own data analysis. Angie Long of Palmer Square Capital Management has developed a proprietary ESG scoring system, and SCIO Capital’s Eriko Aron is taking a distinctive approach to ESG in European private credit deals. Meanwhile, Giorgia Anton of CIBC Capital Markets, Shannon Murphy of Jefferies and Brooke Harlow of the Managed Funds Association are examples of those publishing a variety of ESG research; Kelly Koscuiszka of law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel is advising on ESG regulations; Selma Coffey of Waystone is guiding managers through the new EU Sustainable Finance framework with respect to distribution, while Victoria Gillespie of JTC Group is providing a broad range of ESG analysis for clients. Heads of ESG – which include many distinguished women – from some asset managers now sit on boards and we envisage more hedge fund managers elevating their ESG chiefs to board level. 

Senior women are increasingly playing an active role in recruitment and mentoring, hiring not only university graduates and experienced professionals but also school leaver apprentices and interns, and carrying out mentoring both inside their firms and in various industry, professional, educational or voluntary groups outside work. All of this will help to on-board increasingly diverse future generations of leading women in hedge funds. 

Last year’s report can be found here.