The Health Finance Institute (HFI) is a US-based nonprofit organization that aims to catalyze and scale pathways for increased investment in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with the ultimate goal of accelerating the expansion of the fiscal space for NCDs globally. Although NCDs are a principal threat to global and economic development, there is currently a substantial underinvestment and financing gap for chronic diseases around the world. HFI is committed to solving this gap, making significant financial and health impact on millions of lives across the world.

During my internship, I worked under the CEO and founder, as well as various members of the economic, business, and analytics teams for additional support. My primary responsibility centered around the development of the initial phase of a multi-staged blended finance project to address the burden of NCDs in Nigeria. This model will leverage a blended finance mechanism to gather the capital required to fund the integration of cardiovascular disease and diabetes prevention into existing primary care programs in Nigeria. My main deliverable was the development of an outward-facing user interface of an internally designed economic model that allowed potential stakeholders to run various simulations based on assumptions to facilitate visualization of the economic and health impact of various investment scenarios. This will likely be a critical feature in our overall delivery as it will bring in a wider group of stakeholders into the conversation, regardless of economic modeling or programming expertise. In addition, I supported various team members with quantitative analyses and presentation material for various timely projects, such as outlining a strategic response to the COVID-19 situation and developing a new partnership strategy model that aligned our value proposition to current market demands.

Working at HFI this summer allowed me to apply various skillsets that I have learned through my MBA coursework, notably those from finance, operations, and strategy. In terms of finance, HFI promotes blended finance, an innovative finance mechanism that mobilizes various financial sources to fill the gap for sustainable development in developing countries that current public investment is unable to resolve. The current gap in developing countries in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) set forth by the United Nations is estimated at nearly $7 trillion, representing $12 trillion in market opportunities and 380M new jobs by 2030. Blended finance is a potential solution to this gap and involves incorporating public and private funding sources into a common investment instrument, thereby lowering risk barriers for investors, generating a moderated risk-adjusted return, and incentivizing measurable economic and health impact. Such sources include health thematic bonds, mission-related investments, impact investing funds, and social/developmental impact bonds, all of which can be flexibly arranged to meet specific needs of individual projects. The Capital Markets and Investments course that I took at CBS was particularly helpful in providing me with a strong foundation in understanding the basic terminology and implications of these investment tools, which was critical in allowing me to make more informed decisions during my internship. In addition, Operations Management provided me with the logistical foundation to effectively approach some of my side projects, such as proposing a secure, efficient workflow for generating monthly financial reports required by certain investors. In sum, my internship at the HFI allowed me to draw upon various finance, operations, and strategy themes that I gained through my first-year MBA curriculum and apply them to novel applications in a global health investing context. 

The most noteworthy challenges that I faced during my internship resulted from the travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Being unable to work together in the main office made it difficult at times to communicate fully with the team who spanned five different time zones. In addition, the HFI is located in Washington, DC next to various well-known social impact organizations that hold relevant conferences and meetings throughout the year with ample networking and learning opportunities. While many of these events were replaced with virtual versions, they could not replace the inherent value of in-person meetings. Moreover, HFI is currently scoping out several target countries for investment, and had there not been travel restrictions, we would have likely been traveling abroad to countries such as Mexico and Nigeria during this time. However, HFI did a tremendous job in making the best of the situation. Internally, HFI responded quickly to set up a technical and operational architecture to improve information exchange efficiency and communication as well as the overall working environment (such as Friday afternoon trivia happy hours!). Externally, in order to advance with our country scoping and due diligence work, in-person trips were replaced with primary research from local health expert ambassadors who offered invaluable perspectives of the current economic, social, health care, and political landscape of our target countries. We all hope that this situation will be resolved for next summer, but in the case that some type of remote working is still necessary, HFI has set up a solid foundation for remote work that will only improve for the benefit of future intern classes. 

Apart from gaining invaluable knowledge in global health, epidemiology, and impact investing, the most important takeaway from this experience was understanding the pivotal value that the human component plays in investing decisions, an importance underlined by the current travel limitations. In drafting finance strategy recommendations and due-diligence reports, for example, the insights and quantitative analyses from secondary research serves a pivotal role in contextualizing the situation, but only paints a partial picture of the overall target country landscape. In many cases, nuances are overlooked that can significantly change a final recommendation. It is therefore necessary to incorporate a firsthand perspective where we can ask relevant questions, understand implicit social rules, and exchange proposals. While HFI usually gains this firsthand perspective through live interviews with key government, health, and economic stakeholders from scouting trips in our target regions, we were forced to change our strategy by contracting ambassadors that could provide this critical direct context. Throughout my internship at HFI, I was fortunate to have firsthand discussions with experts in various countries that allowed my recommendations to be more relevant and action oriented. I hope to work in global health settings throughout my career and I am excited for future opportunities to build upon this experience in leveraging diverse perspectives, ultimately leading to recommendations with greater economic and health impact in some of the worlds’ most vulnerable populations.