Annual DEI Report

A review of our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts

The partnership that has powered HarbourVest’s success since its founding in 1982 continues to fuel everything we do in support of our clients, colleagues, and communities. We are proud to share our Annual DEI Report to highlight the important progress we have made over the past year; celebrate the vital work being done to strengthen our firm and industry; and reaffirm our commitment to constant improvement in pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A message from our Executive Management Committee

HarbourVest Partners was founded and, in fact, named with partnership core to who we are and what we stand for. We have embraced diverse voices and harnessed shared values for more than four decades, using the strength of varied perspectives to deepen trust, empower excellence, and drive growth. Our people and the power of what we can do together continues to be essential to the success of our firm. A year out from the publication of our Inaugural DEI Report in 2022, we are proud to have made important progress in each of our six strategic pillars of DEI. These developments further bolster our standing as a resilient, responsive, and transparent organization that reflects the unique perspectives of our team members across the globe, the clients we serve, and the communities where we live and work. In the past year, we established Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to build community through shared experience and encourage colleagues to seek and provide support. To date, more than half of our global team is participating in at least one ERG, either as an identifying member or an ally. We also launched Regional Roundtables to ensure all colleagues have an opportunity to shape our DEI strategy, and HarbourVest University to provide a comprehensive suite of development resources across a broad range of subject areas that includes DEI. Our Diversity & Inclusion Council was expanded to include senior leader representation across more regions and business units and, as part of this change, we added “equity” to the now DEI Council’s name to reflect its importance to our goals. We continue to build on the success of our internship program, and are now partnering with GAIN, an organization helping young women and non-binary people enter the investment management industry. Lastly, we remain committed to supporting under-resourced markets and emerging and diverse managers, two of which we profile later in this report. While this work is key to our success internally, it is also critical that we reflect on the state of private markets overall to both gauge our efforts and to encourage peer organizations to do the same. To this end, we are pleased to share that HarbourVest recently participated in The state of diversity in global private markets: 2023, a report from McKinsey which provides a comprehensive view of DEI across private equity and alternative investing. We believe our commitment to making progress through transparency benefits the entire industry, and helps us learn, grow, and change together. Having celebrated our accomplishments, we also acknowledge that DEI is in a perpetual state of evolution. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to embrace constant improvement. With the publication of this report, we pledge to continue fostering a culture where success is measured not just by financial gains, but also by the richness of our diverse partnerships and shared achievements. We are committed to exploring innovative ways to sustain, expand, and deepen our efforts. Thank you for joining us on this journey.
John Toomey - harbourvest

John Toomey

Managing Director

Peter Wilson

Managing Director

Six Strategic Pillars of DEI

We use a broad framework to define what DEI success means for us centered on six areas of focus:

Cultivating
diversity

Sourcing, developing, and retaining diverse talent

Fostering
inclusion

Establishing an inclusive culture where all employees can thrive

Ensuring
equity

Ensuring processes and procedures are fair and equitable

Strengthening
communities

Strengthening the communities in which we live and work

Investing with
purpose

Investing in emerging and diverse managers and under-resourced markets

Embracing
partnerships

Embracing our leadership role in the industry to progress DEI objectives

“The Six Strategic Pillars of DEI we launched in 2022 continue to ground our work and I am pleased to share that we have made substantial progress in each of those areas over the past year. These efforts have helped to further HarbourVest’s standing as an organization with a healthy and inclusive work environment where colleagues feel welcomed, valued, and prepared to continue advancing our business and their careers.

I am proud of both where we started and the progress we have made but recognize there is more to do. We must hold ourselves accountable for creating sustainable and lasting change through intentionality, perseverance, and transparency. People are our greatest asset, and we will continue to focus on driving equitable outcomes to support one another as we tackle whatever the future holds.”

Kelley King

Chief Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion Officer

Cultivating diversity

Important Disclosures:

This material does not constitute an offer or solicitation for any fund sponsored by HarbourVest Partners, LLC (“HarbourVest”) or its affiliates, or any investment services provided by HarbourVest, and may not be relied on in any manner as legal, tax, or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in a fund or any other investment product sponsored by HarbourVest. No sale will be made in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation, or sale is not authorized or to any person to whom it is unlawful to make the offer, solicitation or sale. This document includes information obtained from published and non-published sources that HarbourVest believes to be reliable. Such information has not been independently verified by HarbourVest. Unless otherwise specified, all information is current at the time of issue. Any opinions expressed are those of HarbourVest and not a statement of fact. The opinions expressed do not constitute investment advice and are subject to change.

The companies and GPs discussed in this report are intended for illustrative purposes only, do not represent all of the investments made, sold, or recommended for funds or client accounts, and should not be considered an indication of the performance or characteristics of any current or future performance HarbourVest fund or investment strategy. It should not be assumed that an investment in the company or fund sponsored by a GP discussed in this report was or will be profitable. Actual investments will vary for each fund and client and there is no guarantee that a particular client’s account will hold any or all of the investments identified herein.

Any published third-party ratings or rankings discussed herein are not representative of any one client’s experience with HarbourVest and are not indicative of HarbourVest’s future performance. Ratings and rankings have inherent limitations and qualifications, and are not indicative of the experience of any client or investor or of the future performance of any product. There can be no assurance that the universe upon which the awards were based included all investment products within each category that are actually in operation or existence. Unless otherwise specified, all awards shown are based on the one-year period immediately preceding the date listed.

Certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of terms such as “may”, “will”, “should”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “project”, “estimate”, “intend”, “continue”, or “believe” (or the negatives thereof) or other variations thereof. Due to various risks and uncertainties, including those discussed above, actual events or results or actual performance may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. As a result, investors should not rely on such forward-looking statements in making an investment decision. Any forecast provided herein is based on HarbourVest’s opinion of the market as of the date of preparation and is subject to change, dependent on future changes in the market.

The principles related to sustainable and responsible investing discussed above represent general goals that will not be achieved by investment selected. These goals are not representative of current processes or outcomes for every strategy, and may not be fully realized for all products or client accounts. There can be no assurance any initiatives or anticipated developments described herein will ultimately be successful. The information provided is solely for informational purposes and should not be relied upon in connection with making any investment decision. It should not be assumed that any ESG initiatives, standards, or metrics described herein will apply to each asset in which HarbourVest invests or that any ESG initiatives, standards, or metrics described have applied to each of HarbourVest’s prior investments. ESG is only one of many considerations that HarbourVest takes into account when making investment decisions, and other considerations can be expected in certain circumstances to outweigh ESG considerations. The information provided is intended solely to provide an indication of the ESG initiatives and standards that HarbourVest applies when seeking to evaluate and/or improve the ESG characteristics of its investments as part of the larger goal of maximizing financial returns on investments. Any ESG initiatives described will be implemented with respect to a portfolio investment solely to the extent HarbourVest determines such initiative is consistent with its broader investment goals. Accordingly, certain investments may exhibit characteristics that are inconsistent with the initiatives, standards, or metrics described herein.

For additional legal and regulatory disclosures related to HarbourVest offices and countries, please refer to Important office and country disclosures.

Continuation solutions encompass a host of transaction types in which a GP secures interim liquidity and/or additional primary capital for their LPs in a strongly performing asset, or set of assets, that the GP will continue to own and control. Specifically, they include continuation funds, new funds created by GPs for the purpose of acquiring the asset(s) that continue to be managed by the same GP and capitalized by one or several secondary buyers, or equity recapitalizations involving a direct equity or structured equity investment into a portfolio company. These transactions can also include a parallel investment from the GP’s latest fund into that same pool of assets (a “cross-fund trade”).