KC Connors, Partner & NEPC’s Chief Consulting Officer, was featured in a recent Pensions & Investments article to discuss NEPC’s fourth annual DEI Progress Report. View the article on the Pensions & Investments site here.
NEPC saw continued progress in 2023 in making diversity, equity and inclusion work for its clients, despite an uptick in political headwinds, with goals set years before within reach and consideration of next steps underway, said KC Connors, a Minneapolis-based partner and member of the consulting/OCIO firm’s diverse manager committee.
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While acknowledging DEI’s recent emergence as a political football, Connors said “despite the winds shifting in this area,” NEPC remains committed to working toward greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the interests of its clients.
At the end of the day, NEPC remains convinced that reaching out to the broadest set of managers — in pursuit of “undiscovered gems” — and overcoming potential biases in interacting with them remain key to connecting clients with the best managers out there, Connors said.
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It will be a shame, meanwhile, if political noise results in organizations walking back the commitments they’ve made to encourage greater diversity in the industry, Connors said. “For us, it continues to be just who we are and what we think will actually produce better results.”
“We’ll see how embraced it is but that won’t really change how we’re continuing to move forward on it,” she said.
Click here to continue reading the full Pensions & Investments article.