Chris is a Double Husky- graduating twice from the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, he earned a Bachelors degree in 2011 and an MBA in January 2015. He is passionate about using his financial background to address climate change, economic growth, and poverty alleviation.
When did you graduate from Northeastern’s undergraduate program and what have you been up to since?
I first graduated from Northeastern in 2011, with a degree in Business Administration and a focus on finance and investments. I took a job at Sankaty Advisors, which is part of Bain Capital, and remained there for three years. Sankaty was a great place to start my career, and I learned a ton about global debt markets and the mechanics of large financial transactions, all while working with some great people. To advance my career, I enrolled at Northeastern again in January 2013, this time in the evening MBA program at the recently renamed D’Amore-McKim School of Business. I intended to use this degree, which I finished in December 2014, to move into a stock or bond research role in a traditional finance career. But along the way I discovered the more appealing and rewarding field of social enterprise and impact investing, which is what I’ve jumped straight into since receiving my diploma a few months ago.
How did you get involved with the Social Enterprise Institute and the “SocEnt”field generally?
I’m very new to the field – I first heard the phrases “social enterprise” and “impact investing” about a year ago. Around that time I was researching socially responsible investment options for my retirement account. I respected many of the mutual funds that took a standard market index and screened out companies with harmful or irresponsible practices, but I wanted to find something that went a step further and used a “positive screen” to build its portfolio from the bottom up with companies doing impactful work. While searching for such a fund, I came across the term “impact investing” and quickly realized that I wanted to make this field my career.
I took a few targeted steps in pursuit of this goal. The first was that I enrolled in the Social Enterprise course taught by Professor Sophie Bacq during my final semester in the MBA program. It was one of the best classes I’ve taken, and helped solidify my understanding of this emerging field. We studied a wide range of social enterprises, from small non-profits that have found new ways to generate revenue from their services, to microfinance institutions that have global scale and healthy profit margins. The next step was to volunteer during the 11th Annual Social Enterprise Conference, which Professor Bacq co-hosted at Northeastern in November 2014. This provided a great opportunity to sit in on several research discussions and network with and learn from some of the brightest, most forward-thinking people in the social enterprise field. The third and final step I took was to apply for the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) program, which is run by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).
Tell us about your experience in the Frontier Market Scouts program.
I was very excited to learn halfway through the fall semester that I had been accepted to the program, which would take place in January in sunny Monterey, CA, a few weeks after wrapping up the Northeastern MBA program. The FMS program, offered each year in January and June, is an intensive two-week certificate training program in social enterprise management and impact investing. The class of approximately 35 people spanned a wide range of backgrounds from business and finance to liberal arts and theatre, all of whom wish to pursue an impactful career. The course is followed by an optional two-to-twelve month field placement at a social enterprise or impact fund anywhere in the world. Fellows can choose from dozens of startups in far-off markets or can create their own fellowship if they already have the connections and desire to do so. The two week program was a valuable networking opportunity and a great way for me to build upon the concepts I learned in Professor Bacq’s class. As an added bonus, the location of the training in Monterey gave me an excuse to explore the beautiful California coastline for the first time! I flew into San Diego a week before the class and spent the time traveling up the Pacific Coast Highway, spending several beautiful days in Big Sur and going as far as Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco before returning to Monterey.
I originally opted not to pursue a field placement after the training, but then I learned that there were several social enterprises looking for someone to work remotely from the US. I took a position with Lumeter Networks, a San Francisco-based organization that has created an affordable electricity meter that gets packaged into solar home systems (SHS) and sold to off-grid customers in developing nations. These systems can make a huge impact on the standard of living of the poorest people in the world. Most of these customers want a reliable source of electricity that helps them charge mobile devices and radios or study and read in the evenings using an LED light. Furthermore, an SHS usually replaces unhealthy kerosene-burning lamps and environmentally unfriendly disposable batteries. The major challenge that Lumeter is facing is that its customers usually cannot afford the significant upfront cost of these systems, so I’ve been tasked with helping the company create a financing arm that lends money to renewable energy providers, thereby allowing them to sell systems to end users on credit. The end users then pay for the system over the course of two to three years, spending about the same amount per week that they would have spent on kerosene and batteries. Over the past few months I’ve been brainstorming financial mechanisms for this lending portfolio, researching existing ones used by established companies, and engaging in meetings over Skype with Lumeter’s founders in California. There has been a lot of ambiguity since the company has a relatively new business model, but the experience has been great and I know that my work is making an impact.
I recently spoke to fellow FMS and SEI/NEU alum Rebecca Willett, who penned this piece in the February newsletter. Rebecca opted to pursue an international field placement after the training, and has since moved to Bogota, Colombia to work as a Business Development Fellow at SokoText, a startup social enterprise. SokoText uses mobile technology to aggregate demand for food and unlock wholesale prices for small entrepreneurs in urban slums, improving their businesses and creating better access to affordable fresh produce in the community.
Working in a very small team with just the two co-founders of the business, Rebecca wears lots of different hats, with the largest focus on building SokoText’s marketing strategy and supply chain for their upcoming pilot. She’s also been writing proposals for international competitions, attending lots of entrepreneurship networking events around Bogotá, and performing market research with small store owners in marginalized neighborhoods. On any given day of the week, you might find her working from home, working from SokoText’s wonderful coworking space at SociaLab, or with her team driving around the dirt roads of the Andes mountains searching for potato farmers to source their products from!
Where do you hope to go from here?
I’ve actually been spending a fair amount of time on another impact project, which will continue ramping up over the next year. I’m working with Michael Green (NEU Alum ’11), who is the Program Director at Climate Action Business Association (CABA), a non-profit whose primary functions are making its member businesses more sustainable and more effective policy advocates, and educating the public about climate change via educational events. My role at CABA is to help create an impact investment fund that focuses on local green and clean technology startups. Many of these startups face a financing gap in their early stages, and our fund will make loans to help them bridge this gap. In the process, we will achieve a dual impact of growing the New England economy while also supporting meaningful innovations that tackle climate change and other environmental issues.
The idea for this fund came from Michael Green at CABA, and I expanded upon it in Professor Bacq’s Social Enterprise class. Our term project was to create a hypothetical social enterprise, and my group decided on an environmentally-focused impact investment fund which would help startup renewable energy companies on their way to scale and profitability. I took many insights from this project and applied them to the real-life startup process for the fund I’m creating with CABA. I’ll be helping raise and structure the fund, and then serving as its portfolio manager once it is established.
What advice would you give to incoming freshmen?
Study abroad. I didn’t, and I regret it. I enjoyed the three co-ops I did as a Northeastern undergrad, all at prominent financial institutions in Boston, but I wish I had done at least one of them or an academic semester abroad. My longest international experience was a great month of backpacking around southern Europe shortly after I graduated in 2011. When I enrolled as a graduate student, I knew I didn’t want to miss the opportunity again, so I participated in the MBA program’s International Field Study trip to Peru and Colombia in May 2014. Although it was a short trip, it was an amazing way to learn the cultural traditions and business practices of these countries, and earn course credit in the process. Plus, I got to take a side trip to Machu Picchu and the hike sections of the Inca Trail in the beautiful Andes mountains of Peru!
What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve been given?
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard is “seek failure.” In other words, push yourself hard and in new, unfamiliar directions. I’m taking these words to heart as I leave behind a “safe” career in established institutions and enter an unproven but exciting field that is full of opportunities. The social impact sector needs more creative minds to take chances and solve the world’s problems. I expect to fail once or twice along the way to becoming an established impact investor, but I plan to learn from my mistakes and move on with new insights and strategies.
