IPEM Global 2026 will be exploring the theme of Mastering the Course, as private markets explore a new path of outperformance. as private markets investors navigate an increasingly complex route to outperformance. Against a backdrop of shifting macro conditions, liquidity pressures, and evolving allocation strategies, the theme is set to spark meaningful debate and fresh perspectives among institutional investors.
Below, we highlight a selection of leading LPs taking the stage this year. Expect sharp insights on capital allocation, manager selection, and portfolio construction across private markets. These are voices worth tracking closely.
Andrea Auerbach, Head of Global Private Investments, Cambridge Associates
LP Congress: Views on asset allocation
As companies stay private for longer and liquidity solutions evolve, how do investment offices adopt the right approach to asset allocation? What role do private markets now play? Do ongoing rolling shocks demand a more agile approach? In a December 2025 Cambridge Associates piece, Andrea said investors should revisit private portfolio exposures because the market is “morphing,” which implies a reassessment of allocation mix rather than a blanket increase or decrease. In April 2026, she said private markets are “a mosaic, not a monolith,” and warned against broad generalisations, pointing allocators toward a more granular approach to exposure and manager selection.
Andrea is Global Head of Private Investments and Partner at Cambridge Associates, where she has spent over 20 years. She leads a 50-person team covering private equity, growth, venture, distressed, and direct investments, and oversees the firm’s discretionary private investments platform. She founded the firm’s co-investment and secondaries practices, chairs their investment committees, and has held senior roles on the Private Investment Ratings Committee. A recognised industry leader, she has published widely and was named to Private Equity International’s Women in Private Equity: Class of 2024. She began her career at Prudential, working on its $5 billion buyout portfolio.
Michael Block, Head of Private Capital, OMERS
Plenary Panel: Illiquidity, it ain’t what it used to be
The traditional secondaries model was designed for a market that has shifted. Blind pool capital committed to a 10-year fund, with returns generated at terminal exit of the underlying portfolio. This worked when there were 5,000 portfolio companies and 1,000 exits a year. Today, there are 29,000 PE-backed companies with a similar number of exits. It suggests that secondaries are the future market infrastructure. Instead of being a reactive tool when LPs need to buy in to or cash out of mid-life funds, they are a more proactive layer that supports capital allocation, portfolio management and rebalancing during the fund’s lifecycle. In 5 years, do secondaries look more like a market infrastructure? And what does it mean for the illiquidity premium?
Michael Block will bring an allocator’s perspective on how private markets are evolving, drawing upon his experience spanning buyouts, growth, venture, and global fund strategy at OMERS, where he serves as Head of Private Capital. Michael leads a global team investing across private equity and related private market strategies, including Ventures, Growth Equity, Green Tech, Life Sciences, and OMERS’ global funds strategy. He has held senior roles at OMERS for around a decade, including responsibilities spanning public and private markets, asset allocation, and overall strategy. Before that, he was a Principal at Boston Consulting Group in Toronto and Stockholm.
Karim Radwan, Partner, Head of Investments, ALTERRA
Plenary Panel: Catalytic capital in action
The OECD estimates that combatting climate change requires $5 trillion of capital annually. The private sector will be a key source of capital, providing up to as much as 80% of the necessary funding (IMF). A new generation of institutional climate investor is ready to meet the challenge head on. What is the reality of deploying at pace without compromising on investment fundamentals - manager selection, sustainability and commercial returns?
Karim is focused on deploying climate capital at scale without abandoning fundamentals: partner selection, resilient infrastructure exposure, and evidence that climate impact can still support commercial returns. As a Partner and Head of Investments at ALTÉRRA, he brings over 23 years of experience in investment strategy, asset management and investment banking. Karim has recently argued that climate capital must be deployed at scale through strong managers and innovative structures, while still proving that impact and commercial performance can go hand in hand. Prior to ALTÉRRA, he was Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Lunate, where he built and strengthened key relationships across global markets. Before that, he served as Chief Investment Officer at Chimera Capital Limited, overseeing venture capital and growth investments and managing global funds exceeding $10 billion.
Ellen Van Den Broek, Portfolio Manager Private Markets, LGPS Central
LP Congress: Where diversification goes next
The practice of diversification requires going wider or deeper into private markets. For LPs with established programmes, this can challenge long-held assumptions. Have years of low distributions helped or hindered the diversification discussion? How do allocators review diversification and where to go next? What influence do stakeholders have on what diversification means in practice, such as the debate about sovereignty of pension capital in UK, Nordics and Australia.
Ellen van den Broek is a Portfolio Manager in Private Markets at LGPS Central, focusing on fund and co-investment opportunities across private market strategies. While her public comments are limited, her work clearly sits at the centre of the diversification debate. She has deep experience in directs, co-investments, secondaries, and primaries, with prior roles at Capital Dynamics, Partners Group, and Aurorae. Earlier in her career, she worked as a financial sponsors banker in London and holds an MBA with distinction from INSEAD.
Lara Banks, Head of Privates, Makena Capital
VC & Growth Summit Panel: Ask me anything on VC
Lara Banks is Managing Director and Head of Makena’s Private Equity team, responsible for day-to-day portfolio management and manager selection across private equity investments. She will be participating in a GP/LP fireside discussion where no subject will be left off the table. Lara’s view is that the most interesting venture opportunities are now clustering around AI, energy infrastructure, and biotech inflection points. Lara talks about Makena managing liquidity, pacing, and secondaries inside evergreen private market portfolios, which suggests she sees VC as part of a broader allocation system with real cash-flow constraints. She is also focused on what makes managers stand out in a harder market. One of her more memorable lines in the ecosystem is the idea that “venture can be like a five-year-old soccer game where everyone is going after whatever the ball of the day is,” which captures her concern about strategy drift and crowding.
Prior to joining Makena in 2012, Lara was an associate at GE Energy Financial Services, a financial division investing across the capital structure of energy assets. Before working at GE, Lara was a power markets analyst at DC Energy, a proprietary energy trading firm. Lara earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics and Government, magna cum laude, from Cornell University.
Michael Ströck, Co-founder, Allocator One
VC & Growth Summit Panel: How to back the best performing VC managers you’ve probably never heard of
Specialist emerging managers are consistently over-represented in the top quartile. If performance is not in question, what is holding LPs back? The concentration of investor capital within the top 20 VC megafunds suggests that bandwidth, data, risk-return profile and a preference of household names are all part of the equation. Michael Ströck is Co-Founder, Managing Director, Founding Partner & Board Member at Allocator One. Michael’s recent public positioning is that specialist first-time VC managers are systematically undercapitalised even though data shows they can outperform generalists.
In a January 2026 piece about his “selection machine,” he discussed lessons from investing in 25 VC funds and described how Allocator One has built a repeatable process for identifying high-potential emerging managers. He argues that the best specialist emerging VC managers are systematically under-owned, and that LPs need a repeatable selection framework if they want to capture that alpha rather than defaulting to megafund names.
Prior to establishing Allocator One, Michael co-founded First Circle Capital. Previously, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at KochAbo. He co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer & Board Member at Gustav. He served as a Board Member at Adent and Kiko and also as a Supporting Partner at Calm/Storm Ventures.