Harold Lavender — unlike New Mexico Inno's other two folks featured in this year's 2024 Look Ahead special edition — has been at the game of finance and investment for a long, long time. Close to five decades, in fact.
The University of New Mexico graduate, former practicing attorney and past member of the Chicago Board of Trade plays two primary roles in the state's startup and technology ecosystem. For one, Lavender sits on the New Mexico State Investment Council, an institutional investment body that manages billions in permanent and governmental funds for the state, where he chairs the Council's investment committee.
He also works with CNM Ingenuity, the tech and entrepreneurship skills training nonprofit arm of Central New Mexico Community College, helping with the nonprofit's business and finance development.
These twin roles provide Lavender a unique view into New Mexico's startup and tech ecosystem — both from a top-down, government investment perspective, and from a bottom-up, workforce training perspective. New Mexico Inno recently caught up with the committee chair and former trader to hear his thoughts on the year ahead.
The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
New Mexico Inno: The State Investment Council was super active in 2023, with lots of investments into venture funds out of its New Mexico private equity program. Do you expect that to continue in 2024? What's your outlook for the SIC going into the year ahead?
Harold Lavender: There is dry powder and there's room within the statutory maximums to continue to make the kinds of investments we've made. … What we've done is we've tried to take a harder look at New Mexico to figure out a way to provide the kind of investments in the state that maybe haven't been there always in the past. I think it's going to be the same if not better. The fact that we invested in [America's Frontier Fund] the way that we did, the fact that we invested in Tramway [Ventures] and Cottonwood [Technology Fund], and the fact that we invested just in this last meeting in Dangerous [Ventures], is a perfect example of what we're willing to do. I don't know the number … but I know that there is a fairly significant number of viable firms that are interested in investing in New Mexico who would be good candidates.
On the CNM Ingenuity side of things, which is more on the startup side, what's your outlook for 2024? Are there any particular industries that you think are going to be seeing a lot of startup activity in the year ahead? We've been eclectic in that we haven't limited the things that we consider to any given asset class, whether it's software development or hardware or anything like that. We're seeing more bio. Artificial intelligence is going to be huge. I think cybersecurity. Then the offshoot from Hyperspace Challenge is space, and all things space. I'm hopeful we're able to move those kinds of ideas to become companies through ActivateNM. Activate has a really interesting time ahead, because I think we're going to have more and more opportunities to work with founders and work with startups to help keep things moving.
On the workforce development side of things, is there anything you're expecting to see in 2024? Now you're on my real pet subject. The reason I'm so impressed with CNM in general and CNM Ingenuity in particular is because that's what we do. Virtually everything we do is directed toward workforce development. We really focus on developing people with skills that can fill the New Mexico workforce. There will be several bills in front of the legislature to enhance our ability to do workforce development, and I'm really hopeful those are well received and that we get those passed.
