Episode 212: Caroline Lovelace of Preserver Partners: Learning to Take Risk and Preparing for Plan B

Caroline Lovelace is Founding Partner at Rose Hill Park Alternative Asset Managers, as well as Preserver Partners as CIO and Co-Portfolio Manager. Preserver is diverse-owned and Memphis-based. It runs a multi-strategy fund that invests through external managers. She has had an extensive career in researching and investing in hedge funds and in promoting emerging private equity and hedge fund investment programs. Our conversation starts with her upbringing and academic career and the mentors who spotted her talents and nurtured them. We talk about the sometimes painstaking process of learning to take risk, about career setbacks, pivots and restarts. We learn about the importance of plan B and beyond and the importance of developing the agility to pivot to these alternatives. This requires a dose of realism and we talk about how to set expectations appropriately and how to advocate for oneself and to be coachable. Moving through Caroline’s various roles, we look at the skills needed to progress successfully through investment banking, then onto the buyside, then into a founder role. We move to speak about the challenges faced by diverse founders more broadly, and how we might move the needle more in this area. This podcast is brought to you with the kind support of Tom Raber and Alvine Capital, a specialist investment advisor and fund placement boutique with offices in London and Stockholm. An early adopter of the “reverse enquiry” form of placement, Alvine relies on insight and dialogue with its pan-European investor base to develop and source investment solutions from a wide variety of industry providers.