For more on CASE i3 – including our latest reports and information for prospective students – visit http://casei3.org.
Last year, Fuqua’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) launched the first comprehensive global program at a leading U.S. business school focused on the emerging field of impact investing, the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing (read about the launch here).
This year, CASE i3 has added a new MBA Fellowship in impact investing to allow second year students at Fuqua to work closely with practitioners shaping this new field.
Impact investors seek to generate environmental and social impacts in addition to financial returns. Many expect the market to grow over the next ten years to invested capital of $400 billion-$1 trillion, according to a 2011 JP Morgan report.
According to CASE i3’s Director and Fuqua Adjunct Associate Professor Cathy Clark, CASE i3’s mission is to establish a rich set of resources and activities for students, entrepreneurs, investors, funders, academics and policymakers to explore and support the field of Impact Investing:
“Impact investing isn’t new. From microfinance to community development finance, from affordable housing to cleantech, the impulse to use finance as a tool to build ventures and industries that improve people’s lives has been developing for more than 50 years. What’s new is the addition of new players: investment banks, pension funds, foundations, and family offices, all interested in finding ways to reap both financial and social returns by investing in creative solutions to the great problems of our time: poverty, health, and education. The standards of practice for most of the impact investment players around the world are in development, and this makes it an exciting time for faculty and students to apply their energies to understanding what really works and what is needed for different players to succeed.”
John M. Buley, Jr., chair of the CASE i3 board, Consulting Professor of Finance, and former head of JP Morgan’s Social Finance unit, believes CASE i3’s new Impact Investing Fellowship program is poised to become the preeminent program in the country for MBA students interested in impact investing:
“Our program combines experiential leadership, cutting edge academic research and partnerships with top practitioners around the globe. Selected through a rigorous application process, our 11 second-year MBA fellows bring extraordinary experience from both the social and finance sectors. They will engage, with oversight from Fuqua faculty, across two terms of their second year with leading funds and organizations working across the impact investing landscape.”
CASE i3 Fellow projects in 2012/2013 include:
- Providing investment guidance to a mobile health service provider in Kenya
- Developing a streamlined due diligence process for an early-stage impact investing intermediary
- Evaluating the impact of for-profit social ventures and impact investing funds, in partnership with several leading academic researchers
- Authoring in-depth case studies on impact investing funds in the UK, US and Latin America with exceptional financial and social returns
CASE i3 currently works with over 40 partners and advisors around the globe, and many are excited about the new fellowship. According to Justina Lai of the Rockefeller Foundation:
“We supported CASE i3 as a research partner because their team brings unique networks and expertise to the emerging landscape of impact investing. We are excited about the launch of the new CASE i3 Fellowship to help build out the next generation of talent to lead the development of this field.”
Please join us in congratulating the 2012-2013 inaugural class of CASE i3 Fellows!
- Matt Allen
- Lila Cruikshank
- Brandon Gregor
- Scott Kleiman
- Mailande Moran
- Brendan Mullen
- David Nicola
- Sarah Palestine
- Greg Payne
- Nicole Thompson
- Jacqueline Westley
Insights generated by the Fellows will be shared with the wider community through the CASE blog, reports, white papers and our ongoing speaker series, online at www.caseatduke.org.