Key Takeaways
- • Women comprise 22% of investment professional roles in private equity but hold just 6% of senior positions, a figure that remained stagnant between 2021 and 2023, according to a 2025 Columbia Business School study of 661 U.S. PE firms; 349 of those firms had zero women in senior roles.
- • A 2019 Investec survey found that 14.7% of women in PE said they would start a business outside the industry if they left their firm, compared to 11% of men, indicating women are more likely to pursue entrepreneurship rather than remain within PE leadership tracks.
- • Female PE professionals leverage specific competencies gained from their industry experience—including company valuation analysis, due diligence rigor, and founder evaluation—to launch successful ventures outside PE, as illustrated by Sandy Fiaschetti's transition from PE advisory to founding Lodestone consultancy.
- • The departure of women from PE creates an entrepreneurial pipeline; while PE's loss of female talent is documented as a retention problem, these professionals are applying hard-earned analytical and operational skills to build independent businesses on their own terms.
Summary
Women enter private equity at comparable rates to men but diverge significantly at the advancement stage. A 2025 Columbia Business School study examining 661 U.S. PE firms found that women hold approximately 22% of investment professional roles but represent only 6% of senior positions—a proportion that showed no improvement between 2021 and 2023. The data reveals a structural problem: nearly 53% of the firms surveyed (349 out of 661) employed no women in senior roles whatsoever. This retention gap has become a standard industry talking point, framed typically as PE's failure to develop female talent into leadership.
However, the narrative extends beyond PE's internal retention challenges. According to a 2019 Investec survey of PE professionals, women leave the industry at different rates and for different reasons than their male counterparts. When asked what they would pursue if departing their firm, 14.7% of women indicated they would start a business outside the PE industry, compared to 11% of men. Notably, not a single woman surveyed stated she would launch her own PE firm. This divergence suggests that women are making deliberate career choices to build businesses on independent terms rather than pursuing traditional advancement within PE hierarchies.
The skills women acquire during PE careers translate directly into entrepreneurial competencies. Sandy Fiaschetti, who worked as an advisor to PE firms and portfolio companies on transactions and value creation, founded Lodestone consultancy after her PE tenure. Fiaschetti noted that exposure to hundreds of businesses through diligence processes provided clarity about what creates value and what erodes it—insights that proved foundational to launching her own venture. This pattern reflects a broader phenomenon: PE experience provides analytical rigor, operational discipline, and pattern recognition across multiple business models that female founders apply to new ventures.
While systematic tracking of where departing PE professionals land is absent from industry research, the stories of women transitioning from PE to entrepreneurship suggest a meaningful reallocation of human capital. These founders bring to their ventures the due diligence mindset, stakeholder management experience, and financial acumen developed in PE, alongside the independence and autonomy that PE career structures did not provide. The implication for the PE industry is notable: retention of female talent remains unresolved, but the broader economy benefits from an influx of female-founded businesses built on institutional-quality operational foundations.
However, the narrative extends beyond PE's internal retention challenges. According to a 2019 Investec survey of PE professionals, women leave the industry at different rates and for different reasons than their male counterparts. When asked what they would pursue if departing their firm, 14.7% of women indicated they would start a business outside the PE industry, compared to 11% of men. Notably, not a single woman surveyed stated she would launch her own PE firm. This divergence suggests that women are making deliberate career choices to build businesses on independent terms rather than pursuing traditional advancement within PE hierarchies.
The skills women acquire during PE careers translate directly into entrepreneurial competencies. Sandy Fiaschetti, who worked as an advisor to PE firms and portfolio companies on transactions and value creation, founded Lodestone consultancy after her PE tenure. Fiaschetti noted that exposure to hundreds of businesses through diligence processes provided clarity about what creates value and what erodes it—insights that proved foundational to launching her own venture. This pattern reflects a broader phenomenon: PE experience provides analytical rigor, operational discipline, and pattern recognition across multiple business models that female founders apply to new ventures.
While systematic tracking of where departing PE professionals land is absent from industry research, the stories of women transitioning from PE to entrepreneurship suggest a meaningful reallocation of human capital. These founders bring to their ventures the due diligence mindset, stakeholder management experience, and financial acumen developed in PE, alongside the independence and autonomy that PE career structures did not provide. The implication for the PE industry is notable: retention of female talent remains unresolved, but the broader economy benefits from an influx of female-founded businesses built on institutional-quality operational foundations.
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