Speakers and agenda unveiled for Harvard’s venture capital and private equity conference
The Venture Capital & Private Equity Club, the largest student club at Harvard Business School, is hosting its 31st annual VCPE Conference this weekend on Saturday 1 February 2025 on the Harvard university campus in Boston, US, with speakers unveiled from KKR Private Equity Conglomerate, the Carlyle Group and Blackstone. The aim of the alternative investment gathering of students, professionals and academics is to discuss AI, biotech and industry developments, emanating from universities and education centers, which will soon impact learning, business and indeed our world.
Infrastructure and national and information security investments will also be discussed by the 90+ prestigious speakers from VC and PE firms at the event, including Alisa Amarosa Wood, Co-CEO of KKR Private Equity; David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Chair of Carlyle; and Sean Klimczak, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone.
More than 20 panel debates will be held on the agenda containing other principals from leading private equity and US venture capital firms, featuring topics additional to the aforementioned AI, Security, Industrial, Biotech and Infrastructure fields, such as:
Alternatives investments,
Climate / green finance under President Trump,
Consumer & Corporate VC investing,
Distressed & Special Situations,
Emerging Markets,
Launching Your First Fund,
Portfolio Operations,
Private Credit,
Real Estate,
Recruitment in PE & VC for Growth, plus the state of the respective markets,
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
“We have an excellent collection of true thought leaders serving as keynotes and panelists that will address the rapidly evolving ecosystems of private equity and venture capital,” said John Dionne, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and Faculty Advisor to the VCPE Conference. “There will be a great exchange of perspectives at what has proven to be one of the most informative conferences of the year.”
Who, or if, someone will present a groundbreaking idea on the scale of Facebook, which emerged organically from the Harvard campus in 2003 initially as Facemash under the auspices of Mark Zuckerberg, remains to be seen. It didn’t come from a formal conference, as few such ideas do. But you never know what industry, communication, or other innovative ideas might emerge from a gathering of some of the brightest minds on the planet – for good or ill, in the case of social media. It is therefore worth keeping an eye on some of the ideas bubbling under on the famous campus if you are an investor, and indeed on other such leading research institutes around the world.
