Jensen Partners tracks, appraises and places asset raisers at VP level or above, who may have all sorts of job titles, such as investment director, client portfolio manager, investment or product specialist, as well as more traditional titles such as business development, sales or marketing. The firm aims to comprehensively monitor and track all business development professionals in alternative investments and rank them not only on hard criteria such as assets raised, but also on softer criteria such as cultural fit.
“The service goes well beyond traditional executive search to bring valuable business market intelligence to clients, around competitors and people moves. My vision was to create a very data driven approach, looking at every distribution platform, and who reports to whom, from top to bottom. We track every hire and departure to work out who the rising stars and rainmakers are. We know who has raised most assets for which products. And peer referencing helps us to work out who works well with whom from a cultural perspective,” explains Sasha Jensen.
My vision was to create a very data driven approach, looking at every distribution platform, and who reports to whom, from top to bottom.
Sasha Jensen, Founder and CEO
When she started out in recruiting in 2000 – working for Rice and Dore, setting up Jensen Associates, and later working for Kinsey Allen and The Gerson Group before founding Jensen Partners in 2012 – there was no LinkedIn, websites were closed and Bloomberg did not write about people moves, so networking was everything: “We had to speak with investors to understand who the marketers were. We used Pitchbook, Preqin and eVestment databases to identify them and develop a dialogue with the best marketers,” Sasha recalls.
Though the volume of public data has expanded enormously, her ambitions have grown still more: “Even in multi-asset platforms with as many as 150 people, every single person can be tracked, and referencing is obtained on them all. Our customized CRM, Jensen Analytics, covers the whole distribution universe globally, in the US, Asia and Europe, gleaning insights that are much more useful than the public and quantitative data on websites”.
Sasha counters the common perception of executive search focusing on psychology because she finds it is not easy to move somebody between firms. Hogan tests, which go beyond personality testing, can be offered, if necessary, but a deeper dive into cultural alignment, informed by a passion for data, is needed. Jensen Partners also ferrets out war stories about how salespeople respond to long journeys and five-hour airport delays. “We pluck away every single layer of candidates,” says Sasha.
Diversity, which is self-identified, also demands rigorous data tracking: “By 2019, we realized that many mandates had launched for diversity of gender or ethnicity, but there was no proper tracking in place to understand the sourcing pipeline of diverse candidates. We know where the diverse candidates sit and if they can move between firms,” says Sasha.
All these deep data dives are partly informed by her earlier career in investigative journalism in South Africa: “I like to strip the onion and look very deep. I am extremely dedicated to data and insist on paperwork and referencing every step of the way. I used these skillsets and protocols to launch Jensen Partners and train the entire staff at the firm”.
Jensen Partners work with clients throughout their lifecycle of growth: “We enjoy working with the largest firms, spinouts and buildouts, but we also find it very rewarding to work with smaller and medium sized firms and watch them grow from USD 500 million to USD 5 billion. There are opportunities for some smaller firms to get traction with top business development candidates at larger platforms,” says Sasha.
Jensen Partners can work with alternative asset managers, and various distribution platforms, of all sizes. The firm research over 1,000 distribution platforms, including every key fund and some unique smaller ones as well. The main focus is on in-house business development professionals, but the coverage includes about 100 “placement agents”, who can also be called “third party marketers”. “There can be a need for local placement agents in regions such as Japan and South Korea,” she says.
Jensen Partners has special expertise in credit and private debt, which in 2024 are most in demand. The firm also covers private equity, real assets and infrastructure, having started in the hedge fund world, and indeed some salespeople need to be versatile enough to pitch any alternative asset class.
Jensen are also savvy about niche strategies that investors are searching for: “We are mapping out new firms in differentiated strategies in ABS and aviation. They use us as a de facto PR firm and may lure other candidates across,” says Sasha.
Jensen Partners naturally wants to share its own hard numbers. Each year it typically meets about 400 firms and works with about 60 of them. It has placed 265 candidates since 2019, when the firm did an MBO, having originally been seeded by Ron Biscardi’s Context Capital Partners. Biscardi is now renowned for the iConnections conferences in Miami and other locations globally, which Jensen Partners participate in. “We were pleased to see iConnections host the first iteration of a senior women in the industry event in 2020,” recalls Sasha.
Proprietary software visualization tools display promotion, advancement, talent retention and talent acquisition. “We can chart every distribution platform and show their geographic presence by countries and cities, and which distribution channels they are focused on for e.g. insurance, consultant relations, competitors and wealth management,” says Sasha.
A recent joint venture with EMBER™, the most precise employee performance measurement system available, according to academic doctoral standards and US Federal Government Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols, broadens the offering to include a custom licensing platform for human capital audits for distribution staff, further gauging team fit. EMBER™ (www.emberinsight.com) has developed systems to statistically evaluate talent at the individual and team level. The data is then tied to organizational success metrics in a clear and quantifiable manner, across 25 industrial sectors. “Our exclusive collaboration with EMBER™ and its founder, Dr. Yasmeen Coning, allows clients access to the cutting-edge analytics they need to evaluate the cultural, commercial and performance fit of each individual they hire. The technology also provides data-based screening solutions for their distribution hiring needs,” says Sasha.
BA Philosophy and Literature, University of Warwick