On May 1st, a team of five SIPA graduate students represented Columbia University in Philadelphia for the inaugural Total Impact Portfolio Challenge, organized by the Wharton Social Impact Initiative and the Good Capital Project. After months of preparation, the Columbia team was one of five out of 25 teams who earned advancement through two initial rounds to the final presentation round of the competition, which began in August 2018. The final presentation was made during the 2nd annual Total Impact Conference.
The Columbia team members are Alecia Hill MPA ’19, Ji Qi MPA-DP ’19, Marc Tannous MPA ’19, Kingsly Wang MIA ’19, and Mingyi Xu MIA ’19 (pictured above). They were very proud to represent Columbia and to have been selected for the final round. They would like to thank the many advisors who helped them throughout the process, including Anna Ginzberg (U.S. Trust), Cary Hanosek (Merrill Lynch), Ethan Powell (Impact Shares), Andrew Hornung (Brookmont Global Eguity), Professor Inna Okounkova, Professor Deborah McLean, and Professor Colm O’Cinneide.
The Total Impact Portfolio Challenge is designed to train students to construct and execute a 100% impact portfolio, incorporating publicly traded securities and private investments to achieve a market rate of return and specific impact targets according to the mandate of a hypothetical client.
The Good Capital Project (GCP) is a collaboration to drive more capital towards purpose-driven investments. Founded in 2017, GCP is an Intentional Media Company. Sharadiya Dasgupta is the Managing Director of GCP and is a SIPA alumna (MPA ’17, Economic Policy).
Interested in Learning about Impact Investing?
We asked the team what advice they would give for incoming and prospective students if they want to learn about impact investing:
Join the Columbia Impact Investing Initiative (CI3) and apply to be a CI3 consultant or a MIINT team member.
If you are interested in the Total Impact Portfolio Challenge (TIPC), consider applying your second year. The process begins in August and is greatly benefited by experience – including in CI3 – connections, and relevant coursework. It would be helpful for your TIPC team to have at least one person with substantial investment / portfolio optimization experience (and ideally a CFA charter holder).
For students interested in impact investing, explore courses in the following areas:
- Courses focused on the implementation of impact, such as: Community economic development; social value investing; PPP.
- Courses focused on the measuring and evaluation of impact, like: Impact investing courses; impact frameworks and tools like the GIIN’S IRIS, GIIRS, Toniic; and ESG standards like MSCI, Arabeque, Sustainalytics, and Bloomberg.
- Courses focused on traditional finance and quantitative skills, including Statistics, International Capital Markets, Multi-Asset Portfolio Management, and non-SIPA courses. (SIPA students can cross-register at other Columbia University graduate schools, including Columbia Business School.)
