Priya Panse

Who they are

Priya Panse is VP, iShares Factor & Sustainability Strategist at BlackRock — she founded Spectrum Consulting in 2026 to build AI-enabled workflows across sales, product strategy, and investor relations.

Person

Priya joined BlackRock in 2014, starting in Aladdin Business Development in Singapore before climbing through ETF Sales (Associate, VP, Director) to her current role as VP, iShares Factor & Sustainability Strategist in San Francisco. She studied Accountancy and Finance at Singapore Management University (graduating 2013), with exchange stints at HEC Montréal and the University of British Columbia — an academic track that signals early international mobility. Before BlackRock she worked in investment banking at Citicorp Investment Bank and Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, plus stints at SEI, Capital Group, and NYSE Wired. Inside BlackRock she co-founded and served as Global Co-Chair of the Asian & Middle Eastern Professional Network, an internal ERG — a parallel leadership track that ran alongside the business roles. In 2026 she launched Spectrum Consulting, an independent practice building AI-enabled workflows across sales, product strategy, and investor relations. The through-line is financial markets expertise combined with institution-building: she's consistently created structures — networks, consultancies, panels — that widen access. Possibly — the long BlackRock tenure signals she values depth over firm-hopping, but the 2026 consulting launch suggests she's also expanding outside it. She writes occasionally on LinkedIn about AI-enabled workflows in regulated environments and hosted a Women in ETFs panel at BlackRock San Francisco in 2025 on 'Women, Wealth & ETFs.'

Company

The most recent headline is BlackRock's $14 billion joint venture with Meta announced in July 2026 to develop and operate a 1-gigawatt AI data center campus in El Paso, Texas, with BlackRock-managed funds holding an 80% ownership stake — a concrete expression of its push to deploy private-market capital into AI infrastructure. That same month, its Global Infrastructure Partners arm, alongside AIP and MGX, completed a $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers, adding over 5 GW of AI-grade capacity. Earlier in 2026, BlackRock closed acquisitions of both Preqin (≈$3.2 billion) and HPS Investment Partners (≈$12 billion), and announced a unified platform combining GIP, HPS, and Preqin data — a significant push to consolidate private-markets capabilities under one roof. In January 2026, its AI infrastructure fund with Microsoft raised $12.5 billion toward a $30 billion target. On the personnel side, vice-chairman Mark McCombe announced retirement in early 2026, and BlackRock cut approximately 200 employees in June 2026 as part of what it describes as a 'continuous rightsizing' strategy.

Market

BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager with $11.5 trillion in assets under management, ahead of Vanguard, Fidelity, and State Street, and its GIP acquisition brought its private-market assets to over $150 billion, placing it alongside Blackstone and Carlyle in that arena. Its main rivals in private credit and alternatives are Ares and Blackstone, and the competitive dynamic in 2026 is increasingly about who can bundle public-market scale with private-market data and infrastructure. Two cross-cutting tensions shape the environment: a U.S.-China regulatory tightrope given BlackRock's significant China interests, and a pivot in its sustainability narrative from ESG to 'Energy Pragmatism' as government priorities shift toward energy security and national resilience.

Network

Priya's most documented network is the Women in ETFs circuit: she hosted a 2025 panel at BlackRock San Francisco alongside Casie Maurer (BlackRock), Cinthia Murphy (VettaFi), Stacy L. Coffey (Rise Growth Partners), and Elisabeth Kashner (FactSet). These connections span asset management, ETF data and analytics, and growth advisory — a cross-firm cohort centred on women's participation in the ETF industry.

Casie Maurer· BlackRock colleague
Cinthia Murphy· VettaFi
Stacy L. Coffey· Rise Growth Partners
Elisabeth Kashner· FactSet

How they likely show up

Joined BlackRock in 2014 and has held multiple roles through to 2026 — Possibly a long-tenure orientation that favours depth and institutional knowledge over frequent firm changes.
Founded the Asian & Middle Eastern Professional Network at BlackRock as Global Co-Chair alongside a full-time commercial role → demonstrates willingness to build parallel structures without a formal mandate.
Launched Spectrum Consulting in 2026 to build AI-enabled workflows while still at BlackRock → high agency, acts on ideas rather than waiting for permission.
Career arc through Aladdin Business Development, ETF Sales, and now Factor & Sustainability strategy → specialist trajectory, not a generalist rotator; brings product depth to client conversations.
Hosted a Women in ETFs panel, wrote about AI adoption in regulated environments → comfortable being visible in public forums, likely responds well to substantive peer-level dialogue.
Possibly — the mix of Singapore banking roots, international education, and San Francisco posting signals comfort with cross-cultural and cross-market contexts.

Conversation tips

→ Reference the 2025 'Women, Wealth & ETFs' panel she hosted — she organised it herself, so it's a genuine point of pride rather than a passive credential.
→ Ask about the Spectrum Consulting launch in 2026 — it's a live project and she'll have specific views on where AI workflows actually move the needle in financial services versus where they don't.
→ She came up through Aladdin and ETF Sales before moving to strategy — frame technical or product questions in terms of the client and distribution angle, not just the instrument mechanics.
→ She writes about AI adoption challenges in regulated environments — if your agenda touches AI or workflow automation in finance, come with a specific use case, not a general pitch.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Spectrum Consulting — she launched it in 2026 to build AI-enabled workflows across sales, product strategy, and investor relations, which is a pointed bet that practical AI adoption in finance is still under-solved.
Reference the Women in ETFs panel she hosted at BlackRock San Francisco in 2025 — she organised and facilitated it herself alongside Cinthia Murphy (VettaFi) and Elisabeth Kashner (FactSet), which signals she builds communities, not just attends them.
BlackRock's July 2026 $14 billion Meta data center joint venture and the Aligned Data Centers acquisition are live context for anyone in her orbit — she sits at the intersection of iShares strategy and a firm now aggressively deploying into AI infrastructure.

Discovery questions

You built AI-enabled workflows at Spectrum Consulting across sales and investor relations — what does adoption actually look like in a regulated environment versus what vendors promise?
You moved from ETF Sales to Factor & Sustainability strategy at BlackRock — how has the client conversation around sustainability changed now that the firm is publicly framing things as 'Energy Pragmatism' rather than ESG?
You co-founded the Asian & Middle Eastern Professional Network inside BlackRock — what made that worth building from scratch rather than plugging into an existing structure?

Avoid

Don't treat her sustainability expertise as purely ESG advocacy — she operates inside a firm that has explicitly reframed that narrative, and conflating the two will signal you haven't done the reading.

Make it yours