Careers that make an impact: summer co-op panel
On the 12th of June, 2019 NUImpact: Northeastern’s Impact Investment Fund hosted a summer event titled Careers that make an impact: Summer Co-op panel. This event was a chance for students to learn about impactful co-ops in the in the investment, clean tech and sustainability industries.
The event was kicked off by NUImpact President Karan Kishorepuria who gave the new members a brief introduction to what the organization was about and what the plans were for next semester. Some of these plans included to make our first investment at the end of next semester and host a regional impact investing conference at Northeastern University (NU) for collegiate impact investing funds at the undergraduate level. He also briefly spoke about the amazing co-ops some of the current NUImpact Fund/E-Board members are doing.
The moderator, a former NUImpact alumni and UN Millennial Fellow: Shivank Taksali was then introduced to lead a 3 minute meditation session with the entire audience. Marketing Director: Tania Zhuang then briefly introduced our panelists and the panel was kickstarted.
Q1. Shivank: Asks the panel members to speak about their co-op journey and how it las lead them to their current careers in impact?
Sureena Sachdev: Sureena’s family did micro finance in Thailand so she had strong roots in social finance. She started working on an NGO in her freshman year of college, along with a few friends. While in high school she joined Habitat for Humanity and heard about NUImpact through a friend and joined the organization in the month of January of 2018. She did a co-op at Wellington Management where she had the chance to look at potential investments regarding climate change using data and trends available to her.
Charlie Doherty: Charlie came in as a traditional Finance major at Northeastern University. He did his first co-op with MFS Investment Management and came out of it in 2016 when there were a lot of talks on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. He then wanted to get a co-op in the sustainability industry but wasn’t able to get one since he didn’t have any relevant experience. He went to Iceland on a Renewable Energy Dialogue of Civilization. He came back to declare a minor in Sustainable business practices and business analytics and did his next co-op at Ceres in the shareholder engagement department. At Ceres he heard about the Intentional Endowments Network and went to his professor and NUImpact faculty advisor Mark Bernfeld who told him to join NUImpact which he did as Vice President of Education and Investment Analyst on the fund team.
Savannah Kinzer: Unlike Charlie and Sureena who had just graduated and were interviewing for full time roles, Savannah was a 4th year student graduating in December of 2020. She had started with Policy work for the nations first carbon tax campaign. She initially came into Northeastern as a business part of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business but quickly changed to an Environmental major. She did her first co-op at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center as a Solar Fellow. She is currently doing her second co-op at Sunwealth as an Investment Associate. She spoke about how the markets are changing and ESG is becoming an increasingly hot topic. Savannah also mentioned the need to put solar on all our rooftops.
James DeCunzo: James came to NU as a neuroscience major. All his peers wanted to either go to medical school or work in a lab, neither of which appealed to him. He then switched to Politics Philosophy and Economics (PPE) major and did his first co-op at Massachusetts Clean Energy Center on the coveted investments team. With this co-op he entered the early stage Private Equity (PE) world, learnt finance and realized this was a super scalable way to make impact. He did his second co-op at Advantage Capital in the Investments team and is currently working at Prime Impact Fund (a 40 million dollar investment fund) as a Prime Fellow. The Prime Impact Fund invests in companies that can potentially lead to 1 Giga-ton of carbon saving. James is currently on the NUImpact Senior Leadership Team and serves as Director of Fund Development.
Q 2. Shivank: Asks the panelists to delve deeper into climate change. Savannah with her work as part DivestNU, James as a Prime Fellow, Charlie with the sustainability minor and Sureena with Wellington Management, asks how has data affected the conversation around climate change?
Shivank: Shivank speaks about how climate change was a part of Mary Meekers 2019 Internet Trends Report.
Sureena: Spoke about the importance of recognizing and identifying trends in data, see the origin of the data. She spoke about how all data tells a story and at Wellington she was able to assist building investment tools to help sort through data.
Savannah: Spoke about how at Sunwealth when they aggregated data, they checked to see how many trees were saved, how many gallons of gasoline were saved by homes investing in solar panels. They then aim to communicate the data in the most effective manner.
Q3. Shivank: Asks for recommendations for podcasts/newsletters that panelists follow to stay up to date on relevant topics, issues and discussion points?
The following is the list of podcasts that were mentioned by our panelists:
- Returns on Investment
2. Radiolab
3. This American Life
4. Freakonomics
5. 99% Invisible
6. Hidden Brain
The following are some of the newsletters that the panelists recommended to our audience:
- Impact Alpha
- CABA
(small plug) Make sure to subscribe to the NUImpact newsletter here.
Q4. Shivank: Asks the panelists if they have any final works of advice for the audience on how they can make the most of the co-ops and their time at college?
Sureena: Read! The more one reads the more is able to learn.
Charlie: Encourages members to network you never knows whom you might bump into. Recommends the audience not to send a job application blind and DM people on LinkedIn when applying for a job asking them for a phone call/coffee. Encourages students to be open to awkwardness.
Savannah: Tells the audience that they must take advantage of being young and speaks about how her team at Sunwealth wants her to succeed. Encourages students to ask questions, be curious and not be afraid of not knowing things and looking stupid.
James: Speaks about the importance of listening and persistence, especially when reaching out to someone. He asks the audience to take full advantage of their student card which is only available while students are in college.
It was a wonderful evening of a conversation and the first time that NUImpact had ever hosted a summer event. I would like to thank all those who attended, our panelists, our moderator, our photographer Kartik Agarwal, our supporters (faculty advisors, alumni advisors, industry advisors, D’Amore McKim School of Business, Mosaic, Intentional Endowments Network and Northeastern University) for all their support. Special shoutout to Tania Zhuang who spearheaded the planning of this event and Sae Oh (Marketing Associate) for supporting her efforts.
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