Congratulations to all of the women on PEI Group’s fourth annual Women of Influence in Private Markets list. With more than 500 nominations in six categories, our editors found it especially challenging to narrow the final list down to 42 women who have made their mark in infrastructure, private debt, private equity, real estate, venture capital and across asset classes.
While Venture Capital Journal celebrates everyone on this year’s list, we want to make sure to highlight the 10 women VCJ chose to recognize. Each has made a significant impact on the venture business and will no doubt continue to push the industry forward.
Rosalind Bazany
Antler
Venture capital
Rosalind BazanyRosalind (Ros) Bazany is a partner and head of ESG and impact at Antler in Singapore. Since joining in 2021, she has led several key initiatives, including the development of a proprietary monitoring tool for early-stage companies to track and support their sustainability progress. Recently, she launched an open-source education platform for founders that equips them with the tools to build sustainable businesses from the outset, with the aim of promoting knowledge sharing across the broader VC ecosystem. By going open source, the platform is understood to have attracted more than 1,500 additional users.
Bazany, who is praised for her “strategic vision and commitment to sustainability,” is on the steering committee of VentureESG, collaborating with industry peers to advance ESG best practices.
Cindi Bough
Climate Investment
Venture capital
Cindi BoughCindi Bough has been honing her climate tech investing skills since 2006, and now serves as a managing director at Climate Investment, which focuses on capital-efficient industrial decarbonization. Based in London, Bough manages the European investment team and is also an investment committee member for China Climate Investments.
Bough introduced 26 opportunities to the firm in 2023, and she has recently led its investments in 44.01, an Oman-based company that has developed a pioneering carbon-removal technology; Zum, a provider of modern student transportation; and Gradient Comfort, which specializes in greener heating, ventilation and air conditioning technology.
In addition, Bough launched Green Juice, a quarterly breakfast series for senior climate VC and growth fund leaders, and she serves on the Investor Advisory Board for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson
Sapphire Partners
Venture capital
Elizabeth “Beezer” ClarksonElizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson, a US-based venture veteran and partner at Sapphire Partners, is described as “a lighthouse in the venture community.” For more than 20 years, she has worked to democratize access to information and help create the venture landscape she wishes existed when she started in the industry. At Sapphire Partners, Clarkson was instrumental to the 2016 launch of OpenLP, a resource aimed at demystifying the LP perspective. In September 2023, Clarkson’s team formed a partnership with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, including the launch of a program to fund the next generation of venture investors.
Nupur Garg
Winpe
Cross asset class
Nupur GargNupur Garg is an investor, independent director and the founder of Winpe, a not-for-profit initiative advancing gender diversity in the investing ecosystem. Winpe is understood to have brought together more than 30 private equity and venture firms to transform policies and practices, and mentored, trained and provided resources to over 2,000 women from 400-plus firms. As an advocate for greater diversity and inclusion in India’s PE and VC community, Garg also co-chairs the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association’s diversity council.
Garg, who previously spent more than a decade at the International Finance Corporation, now serves as an adviser to major institutional investors, as an independent director on boards such as Edelweiss Real Assets Managers, Kerala Infrastructure Fund Management and Indian development finance institution SIDBI, and as an independent investment committee member for the fund of funds managed by India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.
Courtney Russell McCrea
Recast Capital
Venture capital
Courtney Russell McCreaCourtney Russell McCrea is co-founder and managing partner of Recast Capital, a 100 percent women-owned VC platform investing in emerging managers, with a particular focus on diverse partnerships. With 27 years of PE and fund management experience, McCrea has seen firsthand the need for a platform to elevate underrepresented GPs within venture. Last year, McCrea launched Recast Accelerate, a program that brought together funds led by women and non-binary GPs to offer community-building and executive coaching, as well as granting $100,000 in capital for back-office expenses. The initiative received support from Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, and is due to launch its second cohort this year.
Senofer Mendoza
Mendoza Ventures
Venture capital
Senofer MendozaPrior to launching Mendoza Ventures alongside her husband in 2016, general partner Senofer Mendoza was a designer for luxury international hotels.
“My partner had a start-up in our living room that I ended up COO-ing, largely so I could get my living room back, but also because, like with so many families, the tech start-up was the family business,” she says. “I helped him scale and exit that start-up and I launched my career in tech along the way.”
Mendoza Ventures is now on its third fund, with 90 percent of its portfolio companies led by immigrants, people of color and women. The firm invests in AI, cybersecurity and fintech companies, with diversity playing an important role in its investment decisions. “We’ve given a lot of overlooked talent a chance at creating exponential returns for their investors that may not have been there for them otherwise,” she says. “I’m incredibly proud of that.”
In 2023, the female- and Latinx-founded VC firm launched its non-profit arm, Mendoza Impact, to support a new generation of diverse founders, funders and fund employees. “What personally motivates us is closing the wealth gap here in the US, which is an obnoxiously persistent statistic that seems to widen every year despite a lot of very intelligent people’s best efforts,” says Mendoza.
“The challenge that we face every day is that, until money is being allocated by a representative population, it will be very hard to get a fair shake as a founder. We’re still operating in a space where the concept of a portfolio that represents the population of the cities in which we live is very new.”
Mendoza’s other career achievements include being appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship by the Biden administration. Mendoza says her work with the committee emphasized the importance of women speaking up in boardrooms, especially when it came to passing the Tech Hubs portion of the CHIPS Act, part of which requires that childcare facilities be built into new chip manufacturing businesses in the US. “That only came about because there were women in that room,” says Mendoza.
Lorine Pendleton
125 Ventures
Venture capital
Lorine PendletonWith a less traditional entry into private markets, Lorine Pendleton, founder and managing partner of 125 Ventures, started her career in media entertainment, at the William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor) while attending law school part time, after which she became a media lawyer at a boutique entertainment firm that represented stars such as Prince and Stevie Wonder.
During her time as a media lawyer, Pendleton was exposed to private markets, taking a particular interest in venture capital. Fast forward to 2024 and she has recently launched her own VC firm, 125 Ventures, which invests in sports, media and entertainment companies at the intersection of tech. (Read VCJ’s previous coverage of 125 Ventures here.)
Pendleton aims to invest in around 25 companies through the fund, with a particular focus on women’s sports and diverse founders. She describes the work she does at 125 Ventures as “all encompassing” – she does everything from fund set-up right through to marketing and fundraising.
“It’s really great to see something that you’ve created from the ground up and having people believe in you and want to invest in your dream and vision,” she says.
Pendleton says the proudest moment of her career was pivoting. “I didn’t set out to become a venture capitalist, but I saw a lack of funding that goes to diverse founders, women and other people often overlooked by traditional VCs, and I wanted to change that and the face of the investors.”
Her switch to VC has seen her invest in more than 35 companies in a personal capacity and through her previous funds, Portfolia’s Rising America I and II. Notable investments include Oura Ring, the sleep and health tracking device now valued at around $3 billion, and Canela Media, one of the largest Latin streaming services, as well as professional sports team Rhode Island Football Club and its Tidewater Landing Stadium, which is currently under construction.
Meghan Sharp
Decarbonization Partners
Cross asset class
Meghan SharpMeghan Sharp is global head and chief investment officer of Decarbonization Partners, a joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek focused on investing in the next generation of decarbonization solutions to accelerate global efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Sharp joined Decarbonization Partners shortly after its inception in 2022 and has since grown the team to over 25 professionals globally. In her role, Sharp oversees the joint venture’s capital formation, deal origination, investment execution and value-creation activities.
In April 2024, Decarbonization Partners closed its inaugural late-stage venture capital and growth private equity fund, Decarbonization Partners Fund I, on $1.4 billion – surpassing its $1 billion target. The fund has been deploying capital since 2022, including leading one of the largest US cleantech equity private placements of 2023 for sustainable, closed-loop battery materials solutions provider Ascend Elements.
Arian Simone
Fearless Fund
Venture capital
Arian Simone is chief executive and co-founder of Fearless Fund, a US-based firm that invests in women of color-led businesses seeking pre-seed, seed and Series A financing with the aim of bridging the gap in venture funding for women of color. Simone and her team have become a beacon for promoting diversity in VC and championing underrepresented founders, particularly after Fearless became subject to a lawsuit brought by conservative group the American Alliance for Equal Rights claiming the firm’s Strivers Grant Contest for Black women-owned businesses was discriminatory. The program closed in September as part of a settlement agreement.
Simone has a long track record of entrepreneurial experience. In addition to founding the Fearless platform, she launched a PR and marketing firm that counted Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures among its clients.
Suzanne Tavill
StepStone Group
Cross asset
Suzanne TavillAs a partner and global head of responsible investment at StepStone Group, Sydney-based Suzanne Tavill leads the firm’s ESG integration, impact investing and corporate sustainability activities. As part of her ESG advocacy remit, Tavill conducted more than 130 meetings with investment managers and clients in 2023, while also spearheading the development of the firm’s ESG monitoring capabilities. In addition, she has been at the forefront of StepStone’s impact practice, which had $20 billion in capital as of December 2023, and recently launched its first decarbonization-focused commingled fund.
Tavill also co-chairs the UN Principles for Responsible Investment’s PE Advisory Committee, serves on the ESG Data Convergence Initiative’s steering committee and participates in working groups for the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, InvestEurope and Initiative Climat International, among others.
Congratulations to all of the women on PEI Group’s fourth annual Women of Influence in Private Markets list. With more than 500 nominations in six categories, our editors found it especially challenging to narrow the final list down to 42 women who have made their mark in infrastructure, private debt, private equity, real estate, venture capital and across asset classes.
While Venture Capital Journal celebrates everyone on this year’s list, we want to make sure to highlight the 10 women VCJ chose to recognize. Each has made a significant impact on the venture business and will no doubt continue to push the industry forward.
Rosalind Bazany
Antler
Venture capital
Rosalind (Ros) Bazany is a partner and head of ESG and impact at Antler in Singapore. Since joining in 2021, she has led several key initiatives, including the development of a proprietary monitoring tool for early-stage companies to track and support their sustainability progress. Recently, she launched an open-source education platform for founders that equips them with the tools to build sustainable businesses from the outset, with the aim of promoting knowledge sharing across the broader VC ecosystem. By going open source, the platform is understood to have attracted more than 1,500 additional users.
Bazany, who is praised for her “strategic vision and commitment to sustainability,” is on the steering committee of VentureESG, collaborating with industry peers to advance ESG best practices.
Cindi Bough
Climate Investment
Venture capital
Cindi Bough has been honing her climate tech investing skills since 2006, and now serves as a managing director at Climate Investment, which focuses on capital-efficient industrial decarbonization. Based in London, Bough manages the European investment team and is also an investment committee member for China Climate Investments.
Bough introduced 26 opportunities to the firm in 2023, and she has recently led its investments in 44.01, an Oman-based company that has developed a pioneering carbon-removal technology; Zum, a provider of modern student transportation; and Gradient Comfort, which specializes in greener heating, ventilation and air conditioning technology.
In addition, Bough launched Green Juice, a quarterly breakfast series for senior climate VC and growth fund leaders, and she serves on the Investor Advisory Board for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson
Sapphire Partners
Venture capital
Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson, a US-based venture veteran and partner at Sapphire Partners, is described as “a lighthouse in the venture community.” For more than 20 years, she has worked to democratize access to information and help create the venture landscape she wishes existed when she started in the industry. At Sapphire Partners, Clarkson was instrumental to the 2016 launch of OpenLP, a resource aimed at demystifying the LP perspective. In September 2023, Clarkson’s team formed a partnership with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, including the launch of a program to fund the next generation of venture investors.
Nupur Garg
Winpe
Cross asset class
Nupur Garg is an investor, independent director and the founder of Winpe, a not-for-profit initiative advancing gender diversity in the investing ecosystem. Winpe is understood to have brought together more than 30 private equity and venture firms to transform policies and practices, and mentored, trained and provided resources to over 2,000 women from 400-plus firms. As an advocate for greater diversity and inclusion in India’s PE and VC community, Garg also co-chairs the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association’s diversity council.
Garg, who previously spent more than a decade at the International Finance Corporation, now serves as an adviser to major institutional investors, as an independent director on boards such as Edelweiss Real Assets Managers, Kerala Infrastructure Fund Management and Indian development finance institution SIDBI, and as an independent investment committee member for the fund of funds managed by India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.
Courtney Russell McCrea
Recast Capital
Venture capital
Courtney Russell McCrea is co-founder and managing partner of Recast Capital, a 100 percent women-owned VC platform investing in emerging managers, with a particular focus on diverse partnerships. With 27 years of PE and fund management experience, McCrea has seen firsthand the need for a platform to elevate underrepresented GPs within venture. Last year, McCrea launched Recast Accelerate, a program that brought together funds led by women and non-binary GPs to offer community-building and executive coaching, as well as granting $100,000 in capital for back-office expenses. The initiative received support from Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, and is due to launch its second cohort this year.
Senofer Mendoza
Mendoza Ventures
Venture capital
Prior to launching Mendoza Ventures alongside her husband in 2016, general partner Senofer Mendoza was a designer for luxury international hotels.
“My partner had a start-up in our living room that I ended up COO-ing, largely so I could get my living room back, but also because, like with so many families, the tech start-up was the family business,” she says. “I helped him scale and exit that start-up and I launched my career in tech along the way.”
Mendoza Ventures is now on its third fund, with 90 percent of its portfolio companies led by immigrants, people of color and women. The firm invests in AI, cybersecurity and fintech companies, with diversity playing an important role in its investment decisions. “We’ve given a lot of overlooked talent a chance at creating exponential returns for their investors that may not have been there for them otherwise,” she says. “I’m incredibly proud of that.”
In 2023, the female- and Latinx-founded VC firm launched its non-profit arm, Mendoza Impact, to support a new generation of diverse founders, funders and fund employees. “What personally motivates us is closing the wealth gap here in the US, which is an obnoxiously persistent statistic that seems to widen every year despite a lot of very intelligent people’s best efforts,” says Mendoza.
“The challenge that we face every day is that, until money is being allocated by a representative population, it will be very hard to get a fair shake as a founder. We’re still operating in a space where the concept of a portfolio that represents the population of the cities in which we live is very new.”
Mendoza’s other career achievements include being appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship by the Biden administration. Mendoza says her work with the committee emphasized the importance of women speaking up in boardrooms, especially when it came to passing the Tech Hubs portion of the CHIPS Act, part of which requires that childcare facilities be built into new chip manufacturing businesses in the US. “That only came about because there were women in that room,” says Mendoza.
Lorine Pendleton
125 Ventures
Venture capital
With a less traditional entry into private markets, Lorine Pendleton, founder and managing partner of 125 Ventures, started her career in media entertainment, at the William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor) while attending law school part time, after which she became a media lawyer at a boutique entertainment firm that represented stars such as Prince and Stevie Wonder.
During her time as a media lawyer, Pendleton was exposed to private markets, taking a particular interest in venture capital. Fast forward to 2024 and she has recently launched her own VC firm, 125 Ventures, which invests in sports, media and entertainment companies at the intersection of tech. (Read VCJ’s previous coverage of 125 Ventures here.)
Pendleton aims to invest in around 25 companies through the fund, with a particular focus on women’s sports and diverse founders. She describes the work she does at 125 Ventures as “all encompassing” – she does everything from fund set-up right through to marketing and fundraising.
“It’s really great to see something that you’ve created from the ground up and having people believe in you and want to invest in your dream and vision,” she says.
Pendleton says the proudest moment of her career was pivoting. “I didn’t set out to become a venture capitalist, but I saw a lack of funding that goes to diverse founders, women and other people often overlooked by traditional VCs, and I wanted to change that and the face of the investors.”
Her switch to VC has seen her invest in more than 35 companies in a personal capacity and through her previous funds, Portfolia’s Rising America I and II. Notable investments include Oura Ring, the sleep and health tracking device now valued at around $3 billion, and Canela Media, one of the largest Latin streaming services, as well as professional sports team Rhode Island Football Club and its Tidewater Landing Stadium, which is currently under construction.
Meghan Sharp
Decarbonization Partners
Cross asset class
Meghan Sharp is global head and chief investment officer of Decarbonization Partners, a joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek focused on investing in the next generation of decarbonization solutions to accelerate global efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Sharp joined Decarbonization Partners shortly after its inception in 2022 and has since grown the team to over 25 professionals globally. In her role, Sharp oversees the joint venture’s capital formation, deal origination, investment execution and value-creation activities.
In April 2024, Decarbonization Partners closed its inaugural late-stage venture capital and growth private equity fund, Decarbonization Partners Fund I, on $1.4 billion – surpassing its $1 billion target. The fund has been deploying capital since 2022, including leading one of the largest US cleantech equity private placements of 2023 for sustainable, closed-loop battery materials solutions provider Ascend Elements.
Arian Simone
Fearless Fund
Venture capital
Arian Simone is chief executive and co-founder of Fearless Fund, a US-based firm that invests in women of color-led businesses seeking pre-seed, seed and Series A financing with the aim of bridging the gap in venture funding for women of color. Simone and her team have become a beacon for promoting diversity in VC and championing underrepresented founders, particularly after Fearless became subject to a lawsuit brought by conservative group the American Alliance for Equal Rights claiming the firm’s Strivers Grant Contest for Black women-owned businesses was discriminatory. The program closed in September as part of a settlement agreement.
Simone has a long track record of entrepreneurial experience. In addition to founding the Fearless platform, she launched a PR and marketing firm that counted Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures among its clients.
Suzanne Tavill
StepStone Group
Cross asset
As a partner and global head of responsible investment at StepStone Group, Sydney-based Suzanne Tavill leads the firm’s ESG integration, impact investing and corporate sustainability activities. As part of her ESG advocacy remit, Tavill conducted more than 130 meetings with investment managers and clients in 2023, while also spearheading the development of the firm’s ESG monitoring capabilities. In addition, she has been at the forefront of StepStone’s impact practice, which had $20 billion in capital as of December 2023, and recently launched its first decarbonization-focused commingled fund.
Tavill also co-chairs the UN Principles for Responsible Investment’s PE Advisory Committee, serves on the ESG Data Convergence Initiative’s steering committee and participates in working groups for the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, InvestEurope and Initiative Climat International, among others.
