Mergers & Acquisitions names the 2021 PE Leaders in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, including Eugenie-Cesar Fabian, partner and head of ESG and sustainability at Palladium Equity Partners.

Palladium, founded in 1997 and one of the nation’s oldest minority-owned private equity firms, made key management announcements in August. The firm, which is led by chairman and CEO Marcos Rodriguez and has nearly $3 billion AUM, brought aboard Carlos Reyes as a managing director; appointed partner Eugenie-Cesar Fabian to head of ESG and sustainability; and promoted Dominick Barbieri to general counsel and chief compliance officer, succeeding Cesar-Fabian in that role. In her new role, Cesar-Fabian will lead Palladium’s ongoing initiatives in ESG, including overseeing the firm’s responsibilities as a UNPRI signatory and a founding signatory of ILPA’s Diversity in Action Initiative. Cesar-Fabian shared some insights with Mergers & Acquisitions in this Q&A:

What steps you are taking to improve DEI at your firm?
As one of the industry’s oldest, largest, and most successful minority-owned middle-market private equity firms, DEI has always been a strength of ours. Our partnership is 64 percent diverse or female, and our employee base is over 71 percent diverse or female. We built this foundation intentionally, and we continue to use a DEI playbook that ensures we are talking to talent with diverse backgrounds and experience. Because the industry today is extremely non-diverse as a threshold data point, building and maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion requires intentionality. Diversity doesn’t just happen. If diverse talent is brought in, equitable treatment doesn’t automatically follow. And if diverse talent is hired and treated equitably, inclusion doesn’t automatically follow. In order to reap the significant benefits of having a diverse team, firms need to ensure they are actually getting thoughts and views from their diverse colleagues. We continue to actively seek out diverse candidates, and generally have success in doing so, because our leadership is diverse, and professionals from many different types of backgrounds will see themselves among our team, even up to the most senior levels. That’s been our secret sauce since we were founded.

Anything you’d like to add?
It’s been interesting and exciting to see the private equity industry so openly embracing the fact that improving DEI improves performance. We have always known that at Palladium. We were built on the work of diverse private equity professionals, we have raised billions of dollars in assets under management due to the work of diverse deal teams, diverse operating executives and diverse executive leadership. And we take great pride in the fact that our team has the privilege of serving as stewards of the investments made by those who serve millions of public employees – including teachers, firefighters, police officers, and others – who look like us, who similarly reflect backgrounds as diverse as our team’s, and who depend on us to help ensure they are able to enjoy a secure retirement. We work for our investors, and we believe our strength in DEI has definitely facilitated better decisions made on their behalf.