
A Focus on Resources, Education, and Cultivating a Diverse Sourcing Network
The collaboration project is led by co-chairs Emily Cox and Lynn O'Connell, and supported by AIF's Melissa Waller, Susan Boyle, and Barbara Lambroza
2022–2025 Collaboration Project
Goals and Objectives
The inaugural 2022–2023 collaboration project was announced at the 2022 AIF Women Investors’ Forum with an official rollout at the 2023 AIF Annual Investors’ Meeting in New York City. Goals and objectives include:
- Identifying and onboarding resources and collaboration partners
- Launching institutional investors data collection initiative
- Fostering continued thought leader discussions across the AIF and industry landscape


Panel discussion at the AIF Women Investors' Forum
Aligned Organization: Allocator Collective
Differentiated by its collaborative and allocator-focused approach
About Allocator Collective
Mission and Focus
Allocator Collective is a consortium of asset owners, primarily endowments and foundations, that seeks to drive its values within institutional investment teams and portfolios and across the investment management industry.
Allocator Collective’s strategy: Removing barriers to capital allocation; providing allocator access to diverse managers; and building allocator capacity. Removing barriers to capital allocation includes increasing data availability, providing resources to improve underwriting and processes to improve underwriting and monitoring.
Differentiated by its collaborative and allocator-focused approach, one of Allocator Collective’s primary missions is to direct significantly more capital to diverse-owned investment firms as well as to funds with diverse leadership.


Empowering Institutional Allocators to Underwrite More Equitably
Strategy
Allocator Collective's strategy involves:
- Widening the investment funnel by facilitating engagement with diverse managers
- Changing the shape of the investment funnel by empowering institutional allocators to underwrite more equitably
- Expanding the pie through efforts to mentor diverse GPs and potentially fund diverse VC investments
Allocator Collective welcomes allocators from all types of institutions, including nonprofit endowments, foundations, and healthcare systems, pensions, family offices, and for-profit OCIOs and investment advisory firms.

Organizational Alignment for Success
Collaboration with AIF
Allocator Collective is a featured collaborator, AIF Aligned Organization, and participant with AIF Global and the AIF Institute. Allocator Collective involvement in AIF ranges from various forums and symposia, including the AIF Annual Meeting and Women Investors’ Forum, to the ongoing AIF Women Investors Leadership Steering Committee Collaboration Project.
- Melissa Waller, President, AIF and the AIF Institute
