Blackstone Hires Global Head of ESG for Private Equity

Private equity firm Blackstone has named Amisha Parekh as its global head of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) approaches for private equity. As a managing director within the firm’s portfolio operations group, Parekh will lead ESG diligence, policy development and strategy, and reporting for all businesses in the firm’s private equity reporting segment.

Blackstone said Parekh’s hiring is part of its strategy to increase ESG integration across the investment lifecycle and make ESG the core focus of its operational intervention and asset management strategy.

“Executing against our ESG efforts and creating positive impact across our portfolio is imperative to delivering value to our clients,” Joseph Baratta, Blackstone’s global head of private equity, said in a statement. “Amisha will be a critical partner in these efforts and I’m thrilled to welcome her to the firm as we continue to build and operationalize an industry-leading ESG platform at scale.”

Parekh joins Blackstone from Bloomberg, where she was most recently head of the company’s ESG data acquisition and curation efforts, and where she helped launch Bloomberg’s sustainable finance product offering. Prior to Bloomberg, Parekh was a senior manager at Deloitte, where she worked on corporate strategy projects and helped manufacturing, consumer goods, and retail clients develop sustainability strategies and improve operational performance. She is also an adjunct professor of business strategy for sustainability at Glasgow Caledonian New York College.

Parekh earned her Master of Business Administration degree from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, a master’s in environmental policy and behavior from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s in computer science from SUNY Binghamton.

Last year, Blackstone pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 15% among all new investments globally where it controls energy usage within the first three years of ownership. It has also set a goal of having at least a third of its representation on portfolio company boards for new control investments be diverse.

“I look forward to deploying Blackstone’s scale and expertise to help drive value for our investors by creating impact across our private equity portfolios,” Parekh said in a statement. “I’m impressed by Blackstone’s commitment to ESG integration across the firm and look forward to contributing to the growth of its ESG efforts.”