Ms Aarthi Sowrirajan

Managing Director and Co-Head of Portfolio Management for BlackRock Impact Opportunities at BlackRock

Speaker

Aarthi Sowrirajan is a Managing Director and Co-Head of Portfolio Management for the BlackRock Impact Opportunities (BIO) Fund within the Equity Private Markets team. She is responsible for managing the implementation of EPM's social impact investment strategy, including the execution of BIO’s mandate of advancing racial equity through opportunistic investments. Aarthi is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of Acelero Learning, a Board Director of Lift Retro Fitness FTX, LLC and a Board Observer of Conexon LLC, all of which are BIO Fund portfolio companies. Aarthi serves on the Los Angeles Leadership Team and chairs community engagement efforts for the Los Angeles office. Aarthi has over 15 years of experience in financial services with a focus on private markets investments in underrepresented markets. She has transactional experience in real estate private equity, infrastructure development, structured products, securitization and credit. Prior to BlackRock, Aarthi was on the founding team of Turner Impact Capital, a $2 billion impact investment firm focused on driving financial and impact outcomes through real estate and infrastructure investments across education, workforce housing and healthcare. She served as Managing Director and Partner, and led the establishment of the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund in 2011, one of the first institutional-backed impact funds in the US. During her decade-long tenure at Turner, Aarthi held primary responsibility for sourcing, structuring, managing transaction teams, leading due diligence efforts and monitoring investments. She held management responsibilities of overseeing operations, fund management and business development. Aarthi has partnered with academic institutions and industry practitioners to advance the social impact investing ecosystem and drive thought leadership. She has guest lectured at The Wharton School, Harvard Business School, The University of Chicago, UCLA and USC on impact investing. Aarthi began her career as a member of the Structured Products Group at Deutsche Bank, and has also worked in the investment banking division of Bank of America (Chicago), sales and trading at Credit Suisse (New York) and real estate private equity at Canyon Partners (Los Angeles). Aarthi serves on the Board of Directors of Equitable Facilities Fund (EFF), a nonprofit social impact fund for high-performing charter schools. Aarthi served on the Board of Directors for Equitas Academy, one of the highest performing charter schools in Los Angeles, from 2012 until 2020, including two years as the Chair of the Board and several years as Treasurer. She received an A.B. Honors from the University of Chicago with a concentration in Economics and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.