"I worked on the investment team and impact measurement and reporting team for the Catalytic Impact Foundation.

I completed competitive landscape analyses, as well as secondary research on four companies the foundation was considering investing in. This workstream was critical for the foundation’s mission because CIF operates on a philosophy of venture philanthropy, where the funds given to the foundation are invested in worthy companies (especially those developing cures for rare and difficult to treat diseases) and the returns from the stocks are reinvested back into the foundation after the companies go public or are sold. Ensuring that CIF invested in companies that were innovating new technologies and that there was a large enough market to make the investment worthwhile is critical to ensuring the foundation’s solvency long-term.

I also formulated the foundation’s portfolio-wide impact reporting. I used the IRIS and SDG frameworks to determine what key metrics were affected and measured by the companies the foundation invested in. Then, I used the companies’ data and my own secondary research to quantify the potential lives saved and lives impacted by these companies over time. Using these techniques, I created a portfolio-wide impact report, as well as set up a system so the process of portfolio-wide impact reporting could be repeated over time

I used the skillsets learned in my MBA in both of these workstreams. I learned best practices for impact measurement and how to use the IRIS and SDG frameworks in my impact investing classes. I also applied the due diligence analyses I learned from my Intro to VC, Private Equity in Emerging Markets, and Economics of Strategic Behavior to determine whether the potential investments had a sustainable market position and competitive advantage, which were critical pieces of whether they would be financially sound investments for the foundation.

A major challenge I faced was the lack of standardized data for impact measurement. The companies in CIF’s portfolio did not track the same metrics or measure impact at the same level of detail, and they did not address the same areas for impact. As such, I had to create an impact measurement tool that was flexible enough to incorporate all of their various impacts into a few portfolio-wide metrics and that was simple enough to allow the companies to track impact without overburdening the leadership team

I learned that there is a critical gap in health care innovation, where rare and difficult diseases often lack new technologies or innovations to combat them. Even promising research can wither on the vine if there is no existing business case to commercialize it into a new technology. Impact VC can help bridge that gap by focusing on promising new innovations while taking into account the potential additional impact that a company aims to provide.

However, even if returns are not the highest priority at foundations like CIF, I have learned that diligence must be even more stringent because of the scarcity of philanthropic funding, compared to traditional VC or PE. Thus, to meet my long-term goal of using a model like CIF’s to do impact VC or PE investing, I must double down, gain experience, and continue to improve my skills in doing due diligence, fundraising, and judging the character of potential investees."