Goldman Sachs Ends ‘Launch With GS’ Diversity Initiative, Vows Continued Commitment To Diversity – Black Enterprise

Goldman Sachs is shuttering its 2018 “Launch with GS” diversity initiative after claiming it has fulfilled its promise of investing $1 billion into companies that are led, owned, and founded by women and people of color. As Fortune reported, when they committed to invest in diverse companies, Goldman Sachs also said they would only help companies make initial public offerings with at least one diverse director on their boards.

In the 2018 blog post that announced the program, Stephanie Cohen, the then-chief strategy officer, wrote that the goal of the Launch with GS program was to “generate strong investment returns,” which was backed by research indicating that companies with at least one diverse board member outperformed companies with no diverse board members. 

Goldman Sachs, however, says it is not abandoning its commitment to diversity, even though some staff members who worked on “Launch with GS” have been moved to other projects. Some executives, such as Regina Green, who was named head of “Launch with GS” in 2021, announced her plans to exit the company earlier in January via a LinkedIn post. Green wrote, “I’m so proud of the work we’ve done, the founders and managers we’ve partnered with, and the impact we’ve had so far.”

Green went on to say that she also wanted to “partner with and invest in emerging managers funding innovative solutions for our most challenging problems.”

Goldman Sachs is continuing its work on its One Million Black Women initiative, which is a 10-year promise it made in 2021 to give $10 million in investment capital and $100 million in aid aimed at addressing the “dual disproportionate gender and racial biases that Black women have faced for generations.” So far, $2.3 billion has gone towards that goal and they currently have four team members designated to work on the program. Goldman Sachs Global Head of Corporate Engagement and Foundation President Asahi Pompey told Fortune, “We have integrated the sourcing and ecosystem into our existing [asset and wealth management] business,” Pompey said. “Our investors are always thinking opportunistically about finding fantastic investments … and we know that diverse companies outperform … Launch was a way to widen our aperture.”

Pompey also said that the firm was focused on what lies ahead of them instead of what they previously accomplished through the Launch with GS program, telling the outlet that their “focus is very much on the $8 billion that lies ahead of us,” an allusion to its One Million Black Women program. Goldman Sachs focus on diversity currently flies in the face of a broad pushback against diversity and inclusion initiatives in the business world emboldened by the Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action citing the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In addition to this, founders and emerging managers, but specifically those who are women or people of color, have found it more difficult in recent years to raise funds than it has been in the past. Between 2021 and 2022, fundraising by managers declined by nearly 35%, and in 2023 the depressed fundraising market continued, resulting in emerging managers getting less than $20 billion in committed funds, the first time that has occurred since 2016. 

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