New Majority Mentors: Rendel Solomon

Given the barriers to entry for many brilliant minds to reach the top in the financial services industry, oftentimes the pathways to asset management come through roads less traveled.  “My foray into private equity was quite accidental,” shares Rendel Solomon, VC Include’s Senior Advisor. “After graduating from Columbia Business School and having failed wonderfully as an artist manager in the music business in New York, I moved back to Chicago to take a new direction.” 

Finding His Life’s Purpose

Rendel’s mentor, André Rice, invited him to work at his firm Muller & Monroe Asset Management. “I was able to find a place there, despite it not being my intention, and settled into primarily a client service, investor relations, operations-type role, along with serving on the investment team.” He did that for about 12 years, advancing to Managing Director, during which time the firm grew from $300M of AUM to about $1.2B when he left.

After George Floyd’s murder and other incidences of racially motivated violence, Rendel’s long-simmering frustrations, and feelings of inadequacy around affecting the kind of change that he wanted to see, came to a head. “I felt limited because of my need to maintain my role within an organization that is bound by certain rules, policies, and structures.” 

This led him to realize that he needed to free himself from the “golden handcuffs” of a full-time position in institutional investing in order to look for ways to use his experience and talents to bring about meaningful change to that very industry.

Two years later, Rendel joined VC Include as a Senior Advisor and mentor to our fellows.

The Four “A’s”

Over the years, Rendel developed a process that leaders and companies can go through to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. He calls it the four “A’s.” 

The first “A” is Awareness. He wants leaders and people in the finance industry to have awareness that there are extremely few assets managed by firms led by people of color, women, and other historically underrepresented groups. It’s a real issue that needs to be recognized across the board.

The second “A” is Acknowledgement. Once people know the problem of racial and gender exclusion and underrepresentation exists, Rendel wants them to acknowledge the pain and wide-ranging damage that it has caused over a long period of time. 

Accountability is the third piece of the puzzle. “I don’t believe that there is accountability around the lack of capital going to diverse firms,” Rendel states. “There are phrases like implicit bias, fiduciary responsibility, and other buzzwords that fly around the industry but it never points to anyone or any specific entity as to where that problem came from. Who is responsible for that problem?” Rendel believes this lack of accountability is what makes answering the question about what to do to improve the situation so difficult. 

Once companies go through the process of awareness, acknowledgement, and accountability they can proceed to the last “A,” which is to take Action. “Unfortunately, what we see now is that companies are jumping straight to action,” Rendel explains. “There are a lot of organizations that create programs or initiatives, and they throw some money around believing that that is the solution. We then find ourselves without any progress being made to increase the 1.4% of U.S. assets under management by firms owned by people of color and women.” 

That’s because simply being aware of the problem is not enough if you don’t acknowledge where the issues came from. “Lack of representation should not simply be blamed on some nebulous cloud-like entity that magically appeared as opposed to acknowledging that there was, and still is, a systemic structure that was designed to keep capital out of certain folks hands.” Only through an honest assessment of why these issues exist and where they came from can we create strategies to achieve meaningful change. 

VC Include’s Secret Sauce

“The best aspect of VCI, is that it’s looking at the issue holistically, and is trying to bring all participants to the table that are involved in the ecosystem,” Rendel shares. Often LPs, GPs, and consultants are siloed in their attempts to address the issues of diversity and inclusion. 

“What VCI has been doing and continues to do is really create an ecosystem where that dialogue flows seamlessly across those various entities. When you have them all in the same space at the same time, you’ll have a greater likelihood of success and the ability to influence others to also come to the table.” 

Value of Being a VCI Fellows Advisor 

To Rendel, being a VCI fellows advisor means that he’s “connected to a community of active, thoughtful, intelligent investors who happen to be people of color. That’s the dream and that’s the vision, and VCI is fulfilling that.” He felt inspired and empowered to work with this super talented group of investors “in an environment that feels safe and open, but is also challenging and extremely educational.”

As the oldest of three siblings, Rendel jokes that “I felt like a big brother again. It felt good to be in a position to share information from my experiences that I believe they appreciated and they could put into action immediately.”