Even though she works in the bluest of cities in the bluest of states, Taffi Ayodele sees how it’s still a struggle for women and minorities in small companies to demonstrate their financial skills to large asset managers.
“It’s actually more challenging than you think,” said Ayodele, director of diversity, equity and inclusion and emerging manager strategy for the Bureau of Asset Management in the New York City comptroller’s office. The bureau handles investments for the five independent pension funds in the $270.5 billion New York City Retirement Systems.
“It’s harder than it should be,” said Ayodele, who joined the comptroller’s office in October 2022, taking a job that had been vacant for two years.
Minority- and women-owned business enterprises now manage 12.7% of the retirement systems’ assets. “That could be much higher,” said Ayodele, seeking a goal of 15% in 2025 and 20% by 2029.
Part of her role is disabusing critics that emerging and diverse managers underperform. The comptroller’s office found that on both public and private markets, these managers have added additional alpha above their market equivalents.
Ayodele came to her present job via traditional and less traditional paths. An undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA from New York University were among the former. So, too, were investment banking and real estate investing as well as an executive position at the New York State Dormitory as director, Office of Executive Initiatives — Financial and Professional Services Diversity Programs.
Co-founding a footwear company in Lagos, Nigeria, with her husband, a Nigerian and NYU alumnus, from 2012-2019 was the latter. The company’s goal was to create a platform for African men and women to create designs for a global audience.
“We had over 4,000 customers and I struggled to raise money,” she said.
The challenges of raising money as an entrepreneur plus the advice from mentors over the years make her sensitive to the hopes and struggles of emerging managers.
“Since the beginning of my career, they always have challenged me to think differently,” she said. “I think of them as my personal board of directors.”
In business school, Ayodele was counseled by teachers to think about medium-term goals and long-term goals. “Supporting and increasing diversity among managers was my long-term goal,” she said. “At first, I thought it might be in consulting.”
