Jensen Partners Secures Strategic Investment from JB Capital

October 5, 2022 – Jensen Partners, a women-owned executive search and corporate advisory firm that enables data-driven talent solutions for the asset management industry, has received a strategic investment from JB Capital, a Bellevue, WA-based investor focused on market areas underserved by institutional investors. Although the amount was undisclosed, the investment will enhance Jensen Partners’ ability to empower asset managers with data-driven solutions that address a wide range of talent challenges, including diversity, equity, and inclusion; recruiting; hiring; and retention.
“Jensen Partners is an industry leader with an innovative suite of technology and data-enabled talent solutions,” said Jeremy Hill, founder of JB Capital. “Given the intense competition for talent across asset management, hiring decisions have become increasingly important for firms. At the same time, investors are demanding more comprehensive DEI reporting from managers. Jensen Partners’ unique ability to empower confident hiring and DEI decisions sets them apart from competitors and will accelerate customer acquisition and growth across the platform.”
The cornerstone of Jensen Partner’s data-driven approach is Jensen DiversityMetrics, an enterprise software platform that combines self-reported diversity data and human capital management technology specifically designed to enable asset managers to measure, report, and improve talent management. With Jensen DiversityMetrics, firms can benchmark against competitors, source diverse talent, analyze hiring and retention practices, identify biases in workplace culture, and report progress to investors. Jensen DiversityMetrics’ combination of quantitative analytics and qualitative information also powers Jensen Partners’ executive search and recruitment offerings, including Jensen Diversity Pipeline Tracker, an on-demand diverse candidate pipeline.
“Our data-driven approach gives our platform a clear advantage,” said Sasha Jensen, founder and CEO of Jensen Partners and Jensen DiversityMetrics. “We fundamentally believe data has the power to enable better hiring decisions and instill the accountability necessary to make the asset management industry more diverse, equitable and inclusive. To unlock that power, we track over 25,000 professionals across the asset management industry and leverage demographic, hiring and retention data to help asset managers attract, hire, and retain the talent they need to succeed in today’s market. The investment from JB Capital will increase our ability to leverage and integrate data across our executive search, advisory, and DEI solutions.”
Over the last several years, Jensen Partners has received several rounds of institutional funding, experienced transformational growth, and expanded in both headcount and geographic footprint – with locations in New York, Miami, London and Hong Kong. Jensen Partners is a three-time consecutive winner of Private Equity Wire’s “Best Recruitment Company for Investor Relations and Asset Raising,” as well as AltCredit US and AltCredit Europe’s “Best Recruitment Firm.” In 2021, Jensen Partners announced a pledge, which guarantees all future human capital searches conducted by Jensen Partners will begin with a candidate pool comprised of at least 51 percent of candidates who come from underrepresented backgrounds.
“Jensen Partners is committed to helping our clients make meaningful progress on diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Ms. Jensen. “With this pledge we are proving that every human capital search can start with a diverse talent pool. Our data-driven approach and proprietary DiversityMetrics platform allow us to set this baseline, as we work with clients to develop diverse talent pipelines and build workforces that are more representative and inclusive of the communities they serve.”
As founder and CEO of Jensen Partners, Sasha Jensen leads a team of senior recruitment specialists and data scientists dedicated exclusively to the sourcing, recruitment and placement of capital raising and investment professionals for leading alternative investment firms. As a former investigative journalist, Ms. Jensen firmly believes that data substantiates an immediate call to action. As a woman-owned business, Jensen Partners was founded in 2012 on the principle that diversity is a critical and immediate need in the alternative investment space.
“As a firm, we challenge ourselves to be a part of the solution on DEI,” Ms. Jensen added. “As we analyzed our candidate data, it became clear that a lack of diverse candidates was not the problem; the problem was a systematic failure to hire them. We fundamentally believe that increasing the diversity of candidates considered increases the number of diverse candidates hired. With this pledge, we are turning that belief into action.”
“It is evident that the need to address underrepresentation is not specific to the alternative asset industry, but addressing the problem requires meaningful action,” Ms. Jensen said. “We are prepared to make this pledge because we believe it is the bare minimum firms should do to address longstanding, systematic inequity. We built DiversityMetrics to empower asset managers to take a data-driven approach to their DEI strategies.”
“For too long, we’ve heard excuses about a lack of qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds,” Ms. Jensen said. “But the data we’ve collected in DiversityMetrics makes it clear: it’s not about a lack of diverse candidates – it’s about a systematic failure to hire them.”
Jensen Partners Launches New Platform to Address Diversity Hiring
Jensen Partners has launched DiversityMetrics, a software platform to combine self-reported diversity data and human capital management technology specifically designed for asset managers seeking to quantify, measure, report and improve workforce diversity and inclusion – both within their own organization and across their portfolios. The DiversityMetrics platform features a high-tech, high-touch approach that combines customizable data visualization tools with verified demographic data on more than 25,000 investment and distribution professionals, including 8,000 who identify as having a diverse background, working at more than 600 global, alternative investment firms.
“We know that the alternative investment industry has a diversity problem, and each new data point and anecdote provides added evidence that we can use to identify where the gaps are and make specific recommendations for progress on diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Ms. Jensen. “The power of our platform is that it allows alternative asset managers to quantify and qualify the intersectionality of race, class and gender across their workforce, and then use that data to make data-driven decisions about best practices and ensures that the slate of candidates in any given human capital engagement are richly diverse.” It is a product long overdue for the financial sector, she said, which has had its share of diversity hiring problems for years.
Sourcing Investment and Capital Raising Professionals
Jensen Partners is a global advisory, corporate development, and executive search firm that leverages its relationships in the investor and alternative asset management community to source and recruit capital-raising candidates. The firm takes a data-driven approach, combining quantitative and qualitative insights to source and place the ideal human capital. In addition to executive search, Jensen Partners offers LP/GP referencing, proprietary 360-degree investor referencing methodology, and compensation benchmarking and analysis.
Jensen Partners leverages its investor relationships as well as its proprietary big data recruitment and competitor intelligence market mapping model to source and place capital raising professionals. This model is based on the firm’s global database of more than 22,000 global alternative capital raisers, which includes professionals from private equity firms, private credit firms, real estate investment firms, real asset investors, infrastructure investors, and hedge funds.
Related: Jensen Partners Makes Diversity Pledge to Alternative Asset Management Sector
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media