Doug McNeely, a Top Black Executive With BlackRock, Leaves To Work With Carlyle’s Major Clients

The Carlyle Group has hired Doug McNeely, a top Black executive from BlackRock, to work with its major clients on pension funds and endowments.

Bloomberg reports McNeely will join the Carlyle Group later this year as a partner and his move reflects the private equity industry’s growing influence amid a fight for diverse talent. At BlackRock, McNeely managed some of the firm’s most important clients and worked with pensions from Connecticut to California.

At Carlyle, McNeely will join roughly 10 senior relationship managers who focus on institutional clients. In a memo sent to BlackRock employees, Zach Buchwald, BlackRock’s head of institutional business for the U.S. and Canada, praised McNeely’s tenure of building “lasting relationships with key clients of the firm.”

Buchwald also added McNeely, who will stay with the firm through September, helped develop BlackRock’s Impact Opportunities Fund that invests in Black, Latino, and Native American communities and initiatives.

The Washington D.C.-based group formed in 2021, shortly after Kewsong Lee became Carlyle’s sole chief executive officer. Lee, and his top lieutenants, have helped Carlyle’s customers think through more customized ways to invest across the firm.

The service could assist Carlyle’s sales teams in focusing on different business lines, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg. The service could move Carlyle closer to its goal of raising about $130 billion through 2024.

The Duke University alum has spent more than 15 years with BlackRock serving in various positions, including global operating committee member, impact opportunities fund co-founder, and investment committee member.

McNeely talked with Black Enterprise Senior Vice President Derek Dingle at the 2021 Black Men Xcel Summit and discussed how his team was able to thrive despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have a great team,” McNeely said. “You have to surround yourself with great people that share your ethos and share your commitment to excellence. As much as COVID has shown us that we’re all individuals, it also showed us it’s important to stay connected, and we’ve been very connected using all forms of technology to work with each other and also engage our clients as well, but it’s taken quite a bit of effort.”