About Raudline Etienne

Raudline Etienne is a highly experienced strategic advisor to early stage and boutique investment managers. As the founder and managing director at Daraja Capital, she uses her complex and nuanced judgment to advise entrepreneurs and alternative investment firms on governance, investment strategy design, and product positioning. In her career—which spans more than 20 years—Raudline has been a champion of next-generation talent, and thanks to her considerable experience, she is a leading authority on positioning startups and emerging firms for success.

In addition to running her own independent consulting firm, Raudline Etienne is currently a Senior Advisor of the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG) and a trustee of the Janus Funds Board of Trustees. Furthermore, she is a member of the Board of Directors of Brightwood Capital Advisors, a capital provider to U.S.-based enterprises with EBITDA between $5 million and $75 million in the technology, telecom, energy, business services, healthcare, and franchising verticals. She is also a founding board member of the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association.

Raudline Etienne has more than two decades of investment experience in multiple roles as an investor, allocator, due diligence expert and advisor. Her storied career makes her well-equipped to develop the next generation of asset managers.

Raudline Etienne, an Industry Veteran

Before moving into her current roles, Raudline Etienne served as the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) to the New York State Common Retirement Fund (CRF) where she directed portfolio decisions for a $150 billion pool of capital consisting of equity, fixed income, hedge funds, real estate, private equity and opportunistic investments. In this capacity, she was appointed to the Financial Crisis Advisory Group, and her team was also responsible for the College Savings Program, with assets of $12 billion.

Always a supporter of new and emerging talent, one of Raudline Etienne’s accomplishments at CRF was implementing an emerging manager program in all externally managed asset classes.

In a prior position at Rogerscasey, LLC, Raudline Etienne led a team of investment professionals that provided consulting services to a limited number of corporate and public pension clients, and she was responsible for investment consulting for both large and small public retirement systems. Beyond those duties, she served as the lead consultant to a series of sophisticated clients with significant allocations to non-traditional investments, including hedge funds, private equity, and real estate, and she was also a member of the firm’s Non-Traditional Manager Review Committee. As the result of her work in this role, Raudline developed a broad range of expertise across a wide array of asset classes and investment strategies.

Raudline Etienne has also worked as an associate consultant at Washington Hackett, Poitevien & Company in Philadelphia where she conducted manager due diligence, developed and implemented the manager search process’ criteria and evaluation monitoring, and prepared asset allocation studies and manager structure analysis. She was also a research associate at The RREEF Funds in San Francisco.

Raudline Etienne’s diverse experiences in investing and consulting shaped her unique and insightful perspective into how boutique asset managers can position themselves for long-term success. She takes a thorough approach as a consultant, starting with the fundamentals: governance and strategic planning. Raudline helps her clients craft a foundation for their overall vision, organizational structure, decision-making processes, management alignment, and partnership dynamics.

Understanding the Raudline Etienne Difference

Her ability to assist her clients in product design, development, and positioning is an outgrowth of her decades reviewing investment managers. Raudline Etienne provides the strategic advice clients need not only to position their products in the best light possible, but to do so within the most logical distribution channels. A client cannot offer a product without understanding the scope of the market, and Raudline provides the knowledge needed to find the best fit for the product.

There is a distinct element of coaching within Raudline Etienne’s approach. She parses through all of the raw marketing materials of a high-potential asset manager, helps to distill their uniqueness and, ultimately, assist them in developing a cohesive narrative that will intrigue investors.  As Raudline helps her clients find their “voice,” she increases their probability for marketing success.

Recognized for her innovation and support for new boutique managers, Raudline Etienne brings dynamic leadership as a consultant. Her unique business models provides the much-needed guidance and support that asset managers often lack in growing their firms. She is an experienced and insightful visionary who helps a diverse clientele penetrate large institutional pools of capital.

Raudline Etienne graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987 with a B.S. degree in architecture. She then went on to earn her MBA in finance from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was a Robert Toigo Foundation fellow, and she credits the Foundation with helping her enter the finance industry.