Emanuel Pleitez

Pleitez was born in South Los Angeles and raised in the Eastside neighborhood of El Sereno. He is the son of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, brought up along with his younger sister by their single mother.^[5]

He attended Woodrow Wilson High School in El Sereno, where he was elected senior class president and earned 19 varsity letters as well as several academic scholarships.^[6][7] He went on to attend Stanford University.

During his time at Stanford, Pleitez was involved in many student groups, including the Hispanic Undergraduate Business Association, ASSU student government, and Alpha Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity. He also took time off from school to work in the political field; he served as a field organizer on John Kerry's presidential campaign, as well as the special assistant to then-councilman Antonio Villaraigosa during the councilman’s 2005 mayoral race.^{[citation needed]}

While at Stanford, Pleitez was honored with the Jerry I. Porras visionary leadership award and the Cecilia and Tony Burciaga community development award. He graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in urban studies in 2006.^[8]

Beginning in 2007, Pleitez worked as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. He left Goldman Sachs when President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, after being selected to serve as a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team. He worked specifically on Treasury Department agency review.^[9] Following the presidential transition, Pleitez ran for Congressional Representative of the 32nd District of California against Gil Cedillo and Judy Chu.^[10]

After the congressional campaign (which ended in May 2009), Pleitez was appointed to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) as special assistant to chairman Paul Volcker.^[11] There, he "delivered recommendations to President Obama on workforce development, tax reform, financial regulatory reform, infrastructure financing, and residential retrofitting."^[8]

In August 2010, Pleitez left his government job to work as a management consultant in the Los Angeles office of McKinsey and Company.^[12] He left McKinsey and Company in February 2012 to accept a role as the chief strategy officer of Spokeo, a privately held tech company based in Pasadena.^[13] After Spokeo, Emanuel served as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions and Head of Strategy and Business Development for Qlovi, an education technology startup.^[14][15] Emanuel resigned from the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions to train in the U.S. Army Reserve.^[16] After U.S. Army training, Emanuel joined the investment team at Sunstone Partners, a Silicon Valley–based private equity firm focused on growth buyout investments in technology-enabled services companies.^[17] Emanuel is currently a founder of East Los Capital, a technology-enabled private equity firm.^[18]

Emanuel Pleitez has been quoted in the press:

• in Pensions & Investments regarding pension allocations to hedge funds,^[19]
• in PE Hub regarding COVID-19 impact on private equity and venture capital portfolio companies,^[20]
• in PE Hub regarding how private equity dry powder will not save the economy,^[21]
• in Mergermarket regarding venture capital-backed companies leaning on non-bank lenders or venture debt firms to stay afloat during COVID-19 environment,^[22] and
• in dot.LA regarding LPs using Proposition 209 as the reason why they can't do anything about diversity despite their ability to gather data and be transparent and be sure that the public knows what they are doing. By not emphasizing diversity, public institutions have tipped the scale of wealth toward a class of white asset managers.^[23]