Described as “the most successful executive recruiter for asset gatherers,” Sasha Jensen, founder and CEO of Jensen Partners, oversees a group of senior recruiting specialists and data scientists that work on identifying, attracting, and placing capital-raising and investing professionals for top alternative investment businesses.

Journey of Transformation

Sasha has degrees in double-honors degree in philosophy and literature from the University of Warwick, and she also has a BACP-accredited certificate in counseling with a focus on recruiting. In South Africa, where she started her career as an investigative journalist, her love for factual data grew. Sasha saw factual data as a crucial tool for contextualizing the issues that her readers cared about, enabling a greater understanding of the current and future state of the issues that were affecting their lives. She held the position of Head of Investigations at the Sunday Independent and Sunday Star.

With ten years of journalistic and investigative expertise, Sasha made the decision to apply her data-driven approach to executive recruiting. She founded Jensen Partners in 2012, becoming one of the few female executives in a male-dominated field while also attending to clients in the financial services sector, where even fewer female coworkers held top positions.

Vision Behind Founding the Firm

Jensen Partners was founded a decade ago upon the premise that quantitative and qualitative data provides actionable intelligence for identifying and securing the ideal human capital to raise long term capital for firms within the asset management industry. The company prioritizes the improvement of workplace diversity and inclusion (DEI), building platforms and procedures that help individuals from underrepresented backgrounds land roles at top management companies. The process was developed in response to the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing calls for racial justice in the United States in May 2020.

Jensen Partners introduced Jensen DiversityMetrics™– the first corporate technology platform to provide on-demand data that visualizes the state of diversity and representation across each asset class. Over 25,000 investment and distribution professionals from throughout the sector may access validated data from the system, which offers information at both the business and asset class levels. The technology platform also enables firms to establish always-on talent pipelines populated with over 8,000 self-identified candidates of diverse backgrounds. Additionally, the system enables Jensen Partners to track moves across the industry (14,000 since 2014) to give their clients recommendations grounded in empirical information.

Leading Recruiting Firm

Jensen and her team’s dedication to empirical decision-making, informed by data that provides deeper insight into how to create representative workforces, enables them to provide unique talent and workforce diversity solutions to their clients’ unique situations.

Jensen Partners has advanced internally by utilizing the same procedures that have changed things for its clients. Jensen Partners is led by a leadership team comprised of 80% underrepresented backgrounds and identities who oversee a firm that, as of January 2020, is 75% comprised of diverse individuals.

Building a Diverse Workplace

The workplace is undergoing rapid transformation, which has been further hastened by the pandemic in many ways. The shift involves more than simply office work practices; it also involves the way financial services companies operate and how their workspaces are evolving in tandem.

Sasha started working in executive recruiting at a time when there were very few female executives in the area. Change, however, is more than just about creating a culture—for culture is a result rather than an objective. She states, “Diversity is a key ingredient for business success. Companies with great culture share common foundations that lead them there, ranging from valuing the diversity of people, thought, and opinion. Research shows that companies with diverse workforces are better equipped to generate new ideas, which ultimately leads to more profits.” She further adds that leading companies value inclusiveness, driving belongingness through ground-up initiatives rather than top-down C-Suite mandates. The final trait that they share is a commitment to growth grounded in data, leveraging numbers to make achievable goals that create actual change.

There is no denying that diversity is a major problem in the alternative asset sector. Furthermore, one cannot afford to ignore it. Through thorough data collection, Jensen Partners has discovered intriguing insights concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion in the alternative asset industry. The Jensen Partner’s Diversity Report provides an industry overview of the current state of diversity and lays out specific measures to advance diversity in your company immediately. 

In an industry that has historically been controlled by White males, Jensen Partners has monitored outstanding growth in worker representation and DEI.

Goals for the Future

In the upcoming years, Jensen Partners will remain steadfast in advancing DEI by offering the crucial knowledge and assistance that enable representative development. Jensen DiversityMetrics™ will keep broadening the scope of its data offerings, enabling managers to see a notion that wasn’t previously supported by statistics.

Website: www.jensen-partners.com