VIDEO: HarbourView founder Sherrese Clarke Soares: ‘An accidental entrepreneur’

Buyouts sat down for a video chat with Sherrese Clarke Soares as part of our annual profile of 10 influential women in PE. After a long career in finance, working for CIT and Morgan Stanley, Sherrese in 2021 took the plunge and started her own firm, HarbourView – in partnership with Apollo – which invests in intellectual property, primarily in the music industry (her most recent splashy news was the purchase of Latin star Luis Fonsi’s catalog).

In her chat with Karl Shmavonian of Buyouts, Sherrese discusses the process of starting her firm (during a pandemic, no less); the genres of music she’s looking to invest in; what it’s like for a Black woman to be in the rarefied world of private equity, and how important it is for women to take the entrepreneurial path (she humbly calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur”), and how important mentors are, particularly for women. As a bonus, she even gives us a menu of her favorite music to vacuum to, to listen to in the car and to wake her kids up for school.

Click here to read our profiles of 10 women who are making their mark in private equity.