Last month a group of executives active in the secretive hedge fund world met at Morgan Stanley to launch a new organization: 100 Women in Hedge Funds. (The name is a play on the number of investors traditionally allowed in these unregulated investment vehicles.) The first meeting featured cocktails and a discussion of how to manage the ever-growing press corps that tracks the hedge fund business. Word-of-mouth publicity has prompted membership inquiries from Michigan, England and Kuwait, says Lighthouse Partners managing director Dana Hall. The group’s founders stress that they have no political goal beyond providing a networking opportunity for female hedge fund professionals. “This is a hedge fund industry group,” says Sarah Dyer, an official with Trident Investment Management. “We have no great agenda.” Nevertheless, men , even men with great risk-adjusted returns , need not apply. “We said, ‘no style drift,’” jokes Continuity Capital executive Carol Kim. “It has to be women.”
