Michael Elio

Michael (Mike) Elio is a Partner at StepStone Group, a global private markets firm. He joined StepStone in January 2014 and was named Partner effective that month. On the firm's private equity team he leads the middle- and large-market buyouts and secondary funds sector teams, and he serves as portfolio manager for StepStone's evergreen private markets offering aimed at high-net-worth individuals, while overseeing portfolio construction for many of the firm's largest advisory and separately-managed-account (SMA) clients.

Before StepStone, Elio was a Managing Director at the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), where he led the trade body's work on research, standards, and industry strategic priorities — a role that placed him at the center of LP-side best practices and GP/LP alignment. Prior to ILPA, he was a Partner and Managing Director at LP Capital Advisors, where he ran the firm's Boston office and served as lead consultant to North American and European institutional investors deploying more than $5 billion in annual commitments.

Earlier in his career, Elio held a series of progressively senior private equity roles, including Vice President at State Street Corporation and Vice President at Credit Suisse First Boston's private equity division, where he oversaw the funds management group. This combination of LP advisory, standards-setting, and fund-management experience underpins his current focus on fund selection, secondaries, and portfolio construction.

• Invests at the fund and transaction level in private equity, not in early-stage startups — middle- and large-market buyout funds, secondary funds, GP-led/continuation-vehicle transactions, and co-investments.
• Strong emphasis on secondaries as a liquidity engine: StepStone's view (which Elio's team shapes) is that GP-led secondary volume has grown structurally — roughly tripling from ~$32B (2020) to ~$106B (2025) — and that demand for these structures is "structural rather than cyclical."
• Favors disciplined, relationship-driven deployment: strong GP relationships, steady pacing/commitment strategies, and a focus on fundamental value creation rather than multiple expansion.
• Looks for assets with durable earnings growth; StepStone analysis cited by his team notes ~80% of near-term exit candidates have strong earnings growth and limited dependence on multiple expansion, making them well-suited to secondary processes.
• Brings an LP-first orientation (from his ILPA and LP Capital Advisors background) emphasizing alignment, transparency, and standards in GP/LP relationships.