Sarah Higgins – Global Head of Investor Relations – iConnections – Recognized in ’50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds 2025 in partnership with EY, celebrating industry diversity and trailblazing achievements.
This edition marks the thirteenth edition of our celebrated 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds report and is published in association with EY for the twelfth time. This report was a real trailblazer 15 years ago when first published, and it has grown with the industry, as some firms have grown their assets and headcount by ten or twenty times or more over this period. The report continues to highlight notable examples of women making significant contributions to the hedge fund industry, and we thank all the 2025 honourees for working with us to publicly illuminate their stories and inspire more women to enter the industry.
Sixteen firms are featuring for the first time: Alberta Investment Management Corporation, Caius Capital, Cboe, Chepstow Lane, CN Investment Division, CPP Investments, Frontier Commodities, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, Ironshield Capital Management, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Jensen Partners, Oak Hill Advisors, Paloma Partners, Sona Investment Management, TSWII, 140 Summer Partners and University Pension Plan.
The returners, firms such as Balyasny Asset Management, BNP Paribas, RBC BlueBay, Candriam, Capital Fund Management (CFM), Citadel and its affiliates, Citadel Securities, Freestone Grove Partners, Haynes Boone, iConnections, Jain Global, Lone Pine Capital, MFA, Millennium Management, Point72, Rhenman & Partners, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Schulte Roth & Zabel (now part of McDermott Will & Schulte), Tudor Investment Corporation, Verition Fund Management and Walleye Capital, have featured at least once before and some more often. These firms supply serial honourees because they are hiring and promoting women across many job functions and at multiple levels.
We restrict the number of repeat entries to special circumstances such as significant promotion, a firm move or other milestones. This year there is only one repeat, Genevieve Kahr of Jain Global, who featured in the 2015 edition after she launched Ailanthus Capital. This year we feature two women who have founded their own firms: Agata Dornan of Chepstow Lane Capital and Aline Carnizelo of Frontier Commodities. Though it is not easy to find women-led launches, several former women founders, such as Genevieve Kahr, have later joined multi-strategy firms, which we think employ the largest numbers of female hedge fund portfolio managers.
The assets managed by this year’s firms range in size from Chepstow Lane’s USD 300 million to CPP Investment’s CAD 700 billion (circa USD 500 billion). We do not set any hard minimums, not least because some strategies, such as some segments of European credit, may set capacity targets well below tens of billions. Some smaller women-led emerging managers might however land in our annual Tomorrow’s Titans report on rising star hedge fund managers, the next edition of which is published next month.
Thirty-eight of the 2025 honourees are based in North America, of which thirty two are in the US and six in Canada. The European based honourees come from London, Paris, Stockholm and Zug, Switzerland. The honourees come from many more countries including Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Russia and Ukraine. Jensen Partners’ founder Sasha Jensen, an honouree in this report, tells us that the alternative asset managers she works with are absorbing increased visa costs in countries such as the US and the UK.
One of the London-based women, Sona Investment Management’s Narina Valimahomed, is relocating to Abu Dhabi in 2026, and one of the Texas-based women, Haynes Boone’s Vicki Odette, is learning standard Arabic.
Whilst most of the women featured in this year’s report work for hedge funds and other alternative asset managers, four work for law firms, five for pension funds, two for an exchange, one for an events and networking firm, one for an executive search firm, and one at a trade association.
The 2025 report illustrates a range of senior investment and non-investment roles, though not always the same ones as in prior years. Fifteen women are investment professionals in portfolio management or research roles; ten are in marketing/investor relations/client service roles; five are in each of human resources (called business development in the multi-strategy firms), legal and operational roles; three are in general management; two are tax specialists and two work in networking and events. Some, such as Isabelle Mayne of Ironshield Capital and Jessica Davis of 140 Summer Partners, combine COO and marketing functions, amongst other responsibilities.
Past editions of this report have featured chief technology officers and those working for technology service providers. This year we feature two women hired by hedge funds from tech firms: Citadel’s Bonnie Tom and Iris Wang previously worked at Palantir and Enfusion, respectively.
Featured women holding senior positions in roles applying Al and data science to investing, include Balyasny’s Francine Fang; Freestone Grove Partners’ Josie Smith and Frontier Commodities founder, Aline Carnizelo, while CFM’s Galyna Calot has applied Al to multiple non-investment functions.
Women working in private markets – private debt, private equity, venture capital, real estate, infrastructure etc. – feature in our Private Markets: 50 Women Leaders report that published its first edition in July 2024 in association with Citco, and publishes its second edition again in association with Citco later this month. There is some potential overlap since many service providers work with managers in public and private markets, and private debt can straddle both reports since many credit hedge funds have diversified into direct lending.
Once again, this year’s 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds report and the testimonials we received from our industry network as we were putting together this year’s report, increase our confidence in women continuing to grow their share of senior investment and non-investment roles in the alternative investments industry.
– Hamlin Lovell, Contributing Editor, The Hedge Fund Journal
