Ana Paula Gonzalez ’12

Ana Paula Gonzalez ’13, completed two impact investing internships in Mexico. IGNIA LLC, the first impact investing fund in Mexico, supports the founding and expansion of high growth social enterprises that serve the base of the socio-economic pyramid in Latin America, while creating attractive financial returns for its investors. Ana worked with one of IGNIA’s portfolio companies that provides quality low cost housing to the poorest communities in Mexico. She also developed a strategy to sell houses through a new commercial channel using a franchise model. Her second internship was with Adobe Capital, a new fund supported by the platform of New Ventures Mexico at World Resources Institute (WRI). Adobe Capital is an impact investment fund focused on supporting the early growth of social and environmental small and growing businesses operating in base-of‐the‐pyramid communities. During her internship, Ana helped establish the Fund’s processes regarding deal identification, analysis, filtering and selection. She also contributed to the establishment of clear guidelines to identify metrics to analyze and track social and environmental impact. Additionally, she acted as a liaison between Adobe Capital and the New Ventures Mexico business accelerator. Read About More Students

 

My Experience

My work at IGNIA was divided into two main activities: 1) work for one of its portfolio companies and 2) internal work for the fund.

My work for the portfolio company took up most of my time, and it was with the company Mexvi. Mexvi provides housing solutions for the bottom of the pyramid. They have an innovative, patented construction system based on panels that offers high resistance, flexibility, thermostatic properties and other housing benefits. In addition, they have the capacity to bring together federal and state government subsidies, as well as microfinance housing microcredits to offer the BoP financing support as well. My project was focused on optimizing the inventory management process for the factory that produces the panels, which is one of their most critical opportunity areas. Improving this process makes Mexvi more efficient, saving time and costs. This was aligned with the fund’s mission to provide support to its portfolio companies wherever they need it the most. I also helped out with a two-day strategy workshop organized by the new company CEO, helping design a framework to define a new company strategy and alignment of internal operations.

My internal work with the fund consisted of 1) support on preparing documents for their annual investors meeting 2) drafting an impact investment paper with two of the managing directors 3) help with the investment memo and presentation documents for a second fund they are looking to raise.

The project with the factory on inventory management called directly for the skillset learned in Operations Management class. The general management principles I’ve learned at school were also useful to structure the problems I was faced with and the design frameworks to solve them.

One of the challenges I was faced with was working on a completely new area for me: operations management. However, the portfolio company management team was very supportive and interested in my learning, and was grateful of the insight I could provide given my own consulting experience.
Another challenge I faced was learning how to work in a much less structured environment than I was used to, juggling several projects at a time while working for different people. But it was very interesting to get to see and get involved in a wider scope of the fund.

The internship was not as structured as I expected but still it was as great learning opportunity. IGNIA is a very well recognized and pioneer impact investing fund in Latin America. The team is made up of smart and enthusiastic people, which is a good combination for having effective impact. I also learned that impact investing is very difficult, it takes patient capital and a proactive investment team to really make a difference.

My goal is to work for the social and economic development of my country, Mexico. Impact Investing is one of the areas that interests me the most and this was a great opportunity to get first-hand experience in an established and recognized fund. This will also help me make a more informed career decision. I realized impact investing is more difficult than it seems if you really want to make an impact, but it is a practice with great potential.