People and society

Fostering a strong workplace culture

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

People and society

Fostering a strong workplace culture

At StepStone, we understand the true value of collaboration, learning, growth, and belonging. That’s why we’re dedicated to fostering a collegial, supportive, and intellectually stimulating environment where all our employees can thrive.

A comprehensive approach to attracting talent

We strive to help each individual reach their highest potential. We look for outstanding talent and prioritize individuals who not only have the right skills, but also demonstrate a genuine passion for the private markets. Our approach focuses on:

extending our search beyond traditional partners to reach a wide array of candidates, including untapped pools of talent
partnering with a wide range of organizations on events and programs designed to support all groups in accessing the finance industry
including nontraditional schools in our campus strategy, to provide opportunities for college students to gain industry experience and network.

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Nurturing talent

We go the extra mile so that our candidate experience gives every new employee a chance to understand StepStone.

For new employees, the onboarding experience is designed to build on their learning to help them have a successful first 90 days. We aim to empower them to fulfill their potential as exceptional private market professionals by providing:

extensive resources
training programs
well-defined career advancement pathways
mentorship opportunities.

Our Global Head of Talent, Nitin Malik, oversees the entire candidate-to-employee journey and executes our global learning and talent strategy.

The StepStone Mentor Program

We believe that learning and growth should be a journey, rather than a destination. We see our Mentor Program as a professional growth.

This structured six-month initiative connects individuals seeking career guidance with seasoned professionals within the organization. We also have a First Year Mentor Program for our newest team members. By pairing them with established colleagues within their teams, we aim to deliver an onboarding experience that immerses newcomers in their roles, teams, and the broader company.

By pairing new joiners with more established colleagues, we aim to deliver an experience that immerses them in their roles, their teams, and the broader company.

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

Training our professionals

Our training approach uses a combination of formal and informal programs to help our employees develop the leadership, analytical, and communication skills we believe they need to succeed at StepStone. To create an environment that fosters professional development, we offer our employees various routes to obtain technical and people skills, including e-learning opportunities, live webinars, and interactive workshops.

Our training programs for 2024 included:

Fundamental Presentation Skills Workshop
Advanced Presentation Skills Workshop
Manager Bootcamp Level 1 & 2
Flash Sessions (quick live micro trainings)
Promotion Career Panels.

Developing our managers

We offer a variety of training programs to develop our managers. Underpinning our approach is the 4E Framework, which we introduced in 2022 to provide structured guidance for employees with managerial responsibilities. This framework covers four capabilities that can be used in combination with one another and applied to a range of situations:

Empathy: Understand them
Engagement: Connect with them
Empowerment: Develop them
Expectations: Direct them

Level I Manager Bootcamp: An intensive four-session series available for all people managers at StepStone

Level II Manager Bootcamp: Standalone workshops on topics such as delegation for growth and development, managing team conflict, and dealing with difficult performance conversations.

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

Our Sponsorship Program: Building the next generation of leaders

Through our Sponsorship Program, we identify and nurture mid-level professionals who we believe show leadership potential.

Participants undergo a 360 review to help pinpoint their areas of strength and areas for growth to help them become more effective leaders and managers. We match each participant in the Program with an internal, partner-level sponsor and an external executive coach to create a comprehensive individual growth and development plan.

Summer Series

Our Summer Series gives our interns, recent graduates, and employees a chance to learn more about StepStone and the private markets. Hosted by senior members of the StepStone team, sessions in 2024 included:

Responsible Investment at StepStone
Private Markets 101
The StepStone Advantage
Demystifying VC
Technology at StepStone
Leveraging AI at StepStone.

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Performance management

To support the development of our employees, we use a mid-year check-in and an annual year-end performance review process. Performance reviews are a joint process between the employee and their supervisor and help us:

identify key activities and accomplishments throughout the year
review performance against set goals
provide guidance on strengths and development opportunities
establish career growth goals and development plans.

All teams are expected to take part in a calibration session to keep performance ratings accurately assessed and consistently applied.

Benefits and rewards

We've created a dynamic, performance-driven compensation framework that includes:

base salaries
cash bonuses
equity incentive compensation
contributions to retirement plans
profit-sharing.

We also offer a wide range of benefits to support the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families. These include:

generous health, life, and disability plans
mental wellbeing support through our Modern Health Program and wellness challenges
a student loan repayment program for eligible employees in the US who have completed at least six months with StepStone.

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

Support for new parents

Our parental leave policies are designed to support parents through paid leave following the birth, adoption or fostering of a child. Because we understand the challenges that come with balancing parenthood and employment, we also offer additional support for new parents. This varies across our office locations and can include:

covering the cost of work travel, accommodation, and meals for those who need to travel with infants in the first 12 months after returning from leave
reimbursing mothers for the cost of sending breast milk home while traveling for business
providing wellness rooms in key office locations where mothers can pump in a comfortable and accommodating environment
offering new parents access to coaching from pre-birth support through the leave and return-to-work phase
for US employees, we support growing families through Maven, providing benefit support with:

- fertility and family building
- maternity and newborn care
- parenting and pediatrics
- menopause and ongoing care.

Our guiding principles

A level playing field that gives everyone the chance to develop and advance.

An inclusive, supportive culture where every colleague is invited to contribute freely.

Improved performance through enhanced analysis, debate, and decision-making.

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

Culture and community

At StepStone, we believe that within the context of a merit-based entrepreneurial culture, embracing a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences helps us spur innovation, support better decision-making, and deliver exceptional results for our clients.

Employee Resource Groups

Open to all, our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are employee-led and founded. Their mission is to create a strong community, support business initiatives, and foster increased belonging:

Steps 2 Green: Raises awareness of sustainability (including environmental, climate change) both at work and at home.
Parents: Provides support for current and future parents at StepStone.
UNIDOS: Offers the Latino community the opportunity to share their common experience in private markets.
Pan-Asian: Offers the Pan-Asian community the chance to share their common experience in private markets
StepOut: Fosters social connectivity within the LGBTQ+ community, as well as within our broader StepStone community.
Women in StepStone (WINS): Offers our female employees the opportunity to share their experience as private markets professionals.

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SPOTLIGHT

ERG events in 2024

At StepStone, we support all our ERGs in designing and executing events to create networking opportunities and promote the sharing of knowledge and experiences.

All our employees, regardless of whether they are ERG members, are welcome to attend these events, which take place globally and include both internal and external participants.

Events hosted by WINS included:

StepStone 360 Conference Week, Cocktail Event: Every year, during our 360 Conference week, we host a cocktail event at our New York office to encourage networking.

Women in Infrastructure, StepStone Infrastructure and Real Assets (SIRA): The SIRA team held a program of Women in Infrastructure events across many of our global offices.

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Happy Hour Reception, Eighth Annual WAVE Conference: As a Platinum Sponsor of the Women's Association of Venture and Equity (WAVE) Access Career Forum, we hosted a reception in our New York office ahead of the Eighth Annual WAVE conference.

Women in Impact, Sydney: We co-hosted a networking event where attendees collected pre-loved clothing for Dress for Success NSW & ACT, an organization that helps women gain and retain employment.

Events hosted by Steps 2 Green included:

Hunters Point Park gardening, New York: Employees from our New York office volunteered their time to get their hands dirty at a community gardening event at Hunters Point Park.

Events hosted by UNIDOS included:

San Diego Wave FC: Latino Heritage Night: La Jolla-based employees met up to celebrate Hispanic/Latino culture, take part in a soccer match, and connect with their colleagues.

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2024 talent overview

Monitoring the representation of our talent pool

We periodically monitor the composition of our workforce across dimensions including gender, and in certain jurisdictions, ethnicity, disability, and veteran status. We even track the languages we speak—with more than 30 spoken across the 16 countries where we operate. We’re often asked for this information by various stakeholders, including our clients.

We also strive to widen our net to ensure we’re attracting a broad range of qualified talent to StepStone and to the industry as a whole.

Introduction | Governance | Responsible investing | People and society | Appendices

Global EEO-1 data for the 2024 reporting year

Job categories
	Male	Female	Total
Executive/sr officials & mgrs	145	43	188
First/mid officials & mgrs	173	87	260
Professionals	331	211	542
Administrative support	53	67	120
2024 total	702	408	1,110

United States EEO-1 data for the 2024 reporting year

Job categories	Male							Female							Row total
	Hispanic or Latino	White	Black or African American	Asian	Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander	American Indian or Alaskan Native	Two or more races	Hispanic or Latino	White	Black or African American	Asian	Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander	American Indian or Alaskan Native	Two or more races
Executive/sr officials & mgrs	4	43	2	6	0	0	1	1	17	0	6	0	0	2	82
First/mid officials & mgrs	3	65	5	13	0	0	2	6	31	2	17	0	0	4	148
Professionals	23	147	10	36	0	0	8	8	69	8	46	1	0	14	370
Administrative support	6	10	2	6	0	0	1	6	26	6	5	0	0	2	70
2024 reporting year total	36	265	19	61	0	0	12	21	143	16	74	1	0	22	670

_{This table displays StepStone’s EEO-1 data for the reporting year 2024, based on the self-reporting of Stepstone’s United States employee population as of October 19, 2024. It does not capture employees who reported as a category other than male or female. The job categories listed are based on the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) definitions and may not reflect the title of the employees at StepStone.}

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Philanthropy

Through philanthropic contributions, employee giving, and collaboration, we can make a positive impact on the wellbeing of the communities in which we operate.

StepStone Charitable Giving Program

Our senior-level Charitable Giving Oversight Committee leads our corporate philanthropic efforts, which are aligned with key themes that resonate with our values, including health, education, and economic advancement.

Stepping Up: Employee Giving

We encourage our employees to have a positive impact where they live and work through our Volunteer Time Off program. It provides employees with up to 16 hours paid time off per year to volunteer in their communities.

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SPOTLIGHT

Supporting the StepStone Schools initiative in partnership with UWS

Our passion for empowering children through education inspired us to establish a multi-year partnership with sustainability at its core with United World Schools (UWS)—an international non-profit that gives children in remote and marginalized regions access to quality education.

In 2024, 14 colleagues from seven offices and 10 teams traveled to Madagascar to open another primary school in the remote village of Ambalamoa.

Prior to our involvement, just 10.5% of the 942 children in the Ambalamoa community were receiving an education. Since then, enrollment has significantly increased, with 91.4% of children now attending school.

We also support Aglung School in Nepal and are looking forward to partnering with UWS once again in 2025 to open a third school in Cambodia.

Watch the video to see more.

Ambalamoa, Madagascar: StepStone Schools initiative with UWS

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SPOTLIGHT

Supporting Making The Leap:
UK Social Mobility Awards

In 2024, we were proud to continue our support of Making The Leap (MTL), a charity that aims to equip hundreds of young people with the soft skills they need to succeed.

Several of our London colleagues attended MTL’s UK Social Mobility Awards, where the charity’s founder, Tunde Banjoko OBE, delivered a powerful address emphasizing the importance of MTL’s work in offering mentorship, training, and resources to help young people power through barriers and pursue their professional goals.

We also held a special reunion for alumni of MTL's StepStone Scholars program, giving us a valuable opportunity to hear from our very first cohort, launched in 2019, that our program has been genuinely valuable in providing them with the skills, credentials, and confidence to apply for and secure professional roles.