PEWIN

The Private Equity Women Investor Network is an invitation-based network of senior women investors in private markets. It was started by a group of twelve women around 2008 under founding chair Kelly Williams and now reports more than 1,800 members and alumni across 30-plus countries, organised into nineteen regional chapters that were established between 2008 and 2025. Eligibility is narrow and explicitly stated: candidates must hold the senior-most investment title available to them (managing director, partner, founder, chief investment officer or asset class head) or be a C-level or investor relations leader, must have at least ten years in private markets, and must work in private equity, venture capital, private credit or value-added infrastructure and energy. Real estate and hedge funds are excluded. Entry is by nomination from an existing member through the member portal, and PEWIN says the nomination process usually takes two to three weeks. Programming includes industry panels, LP spotlights, CIO roundtables and regional dinners, alongside the Pinklight programmes for women-led firms, ASCEND and TOIGO RISE, and the PEWIN Foundation.

How it works

A current member nominates a candidate through PEWIN's member portal; the review takes roughly two to three weeks, and candidates who do not qualify can be renominated later if their role or experience changes. Members then participate through their regional chapter's dinners and gatherings, national and global events, roundtables for chief investment officers, and the Pinklight and foundation programmes.

Typical member

Members hold the most senior investment titles available at their institutions: managing director, partner, founder, chief investment officer or asset class head, plus C-level and investor-relations leaders. PEWIN reports that 93% of members are at C-suite or partnership level, and that members' institutions manage more than $3 trillion.

PEWIN publishes an unusually precise eligibility test (senior-most investment title, ten years in private markets, and a named list of qualifying asset classes with real estate and hedge funds ruled out), which makes it one of the clearer selective networks to self-assess against. What it does not publish is price: no dues, joining fee or event cost appears anywhere on the public site, and there is no indication of whether membership is funded by dues, sponsorship or both. Nomination by an existing member is a hard gate, so the network is not reachable cold. Its own headline numbers are inconsistent between pages (1,600+ on one, 1,800+ on another), and a 2019 press release cited 600 members, so growth has been fast but the current figure should be treated as approximate. Best suited to women already at partner level; deliberately closed to those below it.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.