More women, people of color working in Chicago VC, Chicago:Blend survey shows

Despite gains, progress remains slow as Chicago trails national rates

 

Click above to watch a recording of our panel on the State of Diversity in Chicago’s Venture Industry, originally broadcast on January 19, 2022.

 

CHICAGO–The non-profit organization Chicago:Blend today released findings from their VC Diversity Survey, an annual benchmark measuring gender, racial and ethnic trends among employees at Chicago-area venture capital firms.

The data (summarized below) shows that despite notable gains in the share of women and people of color working at local VC firms, Chicago continues to fall short when compared to national rates. 

“Although we are pleased that the share of underrepresented professionals working in Chicago’s venture industry increased last year, we know that much more needs to be done to bring greater equity to this sector, especially given that Chicago is demographically more diverse than the nation as a whole,” Chicago:Blend executive director Joey Mak said. 

Founded in 2018 by a group of local venture capitalists, Chicago:Blend publishes diversity data and provides capacity-building resources on diversity, equity and inclusion to VC firms and to their portfolio companies. This annual VC Diversity Survey is the third conducted by Chicago:Blend and represents the most comprehensive dataset of its kind measuring year-over-year (YOY) demographic trends among Chicago’s VC workforce. 

2021 Survey Findings: Highlights 

  • Hispanic or Latino professionals in the Chicago region saw the biggest gains in 2021 – an 80% YOY increase. This group now represents 4.28% of the region’s total VC workforce, up from 2.38% in 2020. The gains were especially pronounced among Hispanic women or Latinas, with a 168% YOY increase, now representing 1.82% of the local VC workforce (up from just 0.68% in 2020). Although encouraging, this figure trails national trends. According to the VC Human Capital Survey released by Deloitte, NVCA and Venture Forward, “Hispanic” professionals comprised 7% of all VC employees nationally.

  • The share of Black or African American professionals working in Chicago’s venture industry increased to 6.10% in 2021 (up from 5.44% in 2020) – a 12.13% YOY increase, which represents the second largest YOY percent increase among all racial and ethnic groups in our sample. Black or African American professionals in Chicago are outpacing their counterparts nationally, where only 4% of the national VC workforce is Black or African American.

  • Asian professionals accounted for 10.12% of the region’s VC workforce in 2021 (up from 9.18% in 2020) – a 10.24% YOY increase. Nationally, Asians and Pacific Islanders represent 18% of the total VC workforce.

  • The total share of White professionals fell slightly from 81% in 2020 to 78% in 2021 (a 3.50% YOY decrease).

  • Women represented 33.85% of the region’s VC workforce in 2021 (up from 32.48% in 2020) – a 4.22% YOY increase. Although positive, women at Chicago-area VCs still make up a smaller share when compared to the country as a whole, where women make up 45% of the overall VC workforce.

  • When looking only at First-Time Funds (FTF) in Chicago, the total share and the percent increase YOY was higher among women, Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American professionals. In 2021:

    • Women made up 42.57% of FTF employees (up from 39.24% in 2020) – an 8.49% YOY increase.

    • Hispanic or Latino professionals made up 7.92% of FTF employees (up from 2.53% in 2020) – a 213% YOY increase.

    • Black or African American professionals made up 19.8% of FTF employees (up from 12.66% in 2020) – a 56.4% YOY increase.

    • Asian professionals made up 5.94% of FTF employees (down slightly from 6.33% in 2020) – a 6.16% YOY decrease.

    • White professionals made up 65.35% of FTF employees (down from 78.48% in 2020) – a 16.73% YOY decrease.

  • 2021 is the first time when we had sufficient data to observe promotions among VC professionals YOY. The majority (60%) of promotions in 2021 went to men. In terms of race and ethnicity, more than 90% of promotions went to professionals who are White or Asian. Less than 10% of promotions went to Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American professionals combined.

  • Beyond comparing our 2021 data against our 2020 data, or against national rates of representation, we must also take into account the city’s demographics to better understand these findings through an equity lens. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the City of Chicago is 33.3% White (Non-Hispanic), 29.6% Black or African American, 28.8% Hispanic or Latino, and 6.6% Asian. The city is far more diverse racially and ethnically compared to the total U.S. population, so the lack of equitable representation among Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino VC professionals locally is even more pronounced, despite recent gains.

Methodology

This data was collected in July and August, 2021. The dataset includes 771 employees from 114 firms with a Chicago office that have made at least one venture investment within the past two years. These firms include venture funds that are $5M+, family offices, angel investment networks, and a handful of other investors that also do venture deals.

Fund Size, designation of First-Time Fund, and employee information is sourced from Pitchbook, CB Insights, Crunchbase, news articles found online, and other publicly available data, including information obtained from the firms’ websites. Firms were given an opportunity via email to confirm or correct their data. 

This year, we added “Non-Binary or Other” as an option under the “Gender” field, but we did not identify anyone among the 771 employees in this dataset who identifies as such.

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