The whole aspect of impact investing - that you can make investments, get the risk adjusted financial returns, and be making a difference - really started getting coined in 2007, when the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation started talking about this.īut it was kind of an unheard concept, untested. What have you observed and what’s been going on since then?
Tell me some of your observations of the impact investing space, especially prior to 2012.
So, now I teach a required course called Leadership and Corporate Accountability, in addition to the sustainable investing course. You’re doing that and then they ask you to do something else. That’s how I got there and it’s been a fabulous journey. And that’s what I will be teaching for the fifth time this coming spring. Now, it’s a full credit course as an elective in the MBA program. We wrote nearly 25 cases between us over a two-and-a-half-year period. And then we spent basically two years preparing because there were no case materials at Harvard Business School. One thing led to another, I teamed up with Shawn Cole, who’s a tenured professor in the finance department. Well, if I’m going to have impact and make a difference, wouldn’t it be fabulous, in addition to setting up a fund and helping with government policy, et cetera, wouldn’t it be perfect if I could develop something and basically teach it to some of the brightest minds in the world who will be leaders in the future? Do you guys have courses like this at HBS?” And they said, “We do little pockets here or there, in some of the other courses.” I got talking to the dean who I knew, as well as the head of faculty development, “This is what I’m doing. I’m an alumnus from HBS, so I was spending quite a bit of time on campus.
In an interview with RIA Intel, Gandhi shared what the case study-driven course will cover (it changes every year) and why he hopes, one day, it won’t exist. This spring, he’ll be teaching “Investing - Risk, Return, and Impact” for the fifth time. He co-founded Asha Impact, an impact investment firm and platform, and started VSG Capital Advisors, a company that provides strategic financial and investment advisory services in the private and social sectors (the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and others are clients).Īn alumnus of Harvard Business School, Gandhi discovered there were no classes in the program dedicated to impact investing so he helped create one. “I figured why not try and combine my business skills and my finance and my investing skills, which I’d developed over that period of time, with this whole thesis that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive,” he said. A decade ago, after 23 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, Vikram Gandhi wanted to do something different.