Internship Description
Hudson Hoyle,'23BUS'24SIPA, served as president of Columbia Business School's student-led impact investing fund, Microlumbia, for the 2022-2023 academic year. As a fellow, Hudson continued advancing several strategic initiatives for the fund. He was tasked with producing a holistic assessment of the fund's operations, finalizing a climate investment thesis to expand the fund's investment mandate, and executing operational improvements to position Microlumbia for future growth.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work alongside Microlumbia's board of directors to advance key priorities and maintain momentum for the organization throughout the summer months. I was able to focus on several initiatives for the organization, including producing the following
- A finalized climate investment thesis, reviewed and approved by Microlumbia's board of directors - An updated Microlumbia website, refreshed with new images and content and an improved user experience - Microlumbia's annual report which is published in June of each year, highlighting the organization's efforts through the past year - A holistic assessment of Microlumbia's current operations and areas for improvement across the various functions of the organization (e.g., management, operations, finance, investments, fundraising, etc.) — to be used for leadership transition
As a dual degree candidate pursuing an MBA and master's in international affairs in energy and environment policy, a significant portion of my studies have focused on the intersection of capital markets and the energy transition. Thus, focusing on Microlumbia's strategy to expand into alternative thematic areas (e.g., climate and sustainability) by developing an investment thesis was a valuable experience for me. Also, I enjoyed getting to build a website essentially from the ground up and hone my design and content development capabilities.
Once challenge I faced in my project was the iterative nature of the assignments. There were several stakeholders involved in reviewing, providing feedback, and approving the final deliverables. This led to some prolonged timelines for certain items that I did not originally anticipate.
One key takeaway from this summer is the importance of organization and documentation of deliverables. Building a website from scratch proved a daunting task when some source materials I needed were scattered in different locations across different platforms. Through the process, I was able to streamline the file structure for the organization and track down some critical files that had been lost in transition over the years.