Martin Aares (MBA 2001) had always known his childhood interest in the environment would be part of his life, but he wasn’t sure that passion could be part of his business career, too. Now a managing director for Closed Loop Partners, he reflects on finding his way to a career that merges the worlds of finance, investing, and environmental impact. [...]

During her three years at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Yoonjin Min, MBA 2020, made the shift from serving as a generalist to a specialist in healthcare strategy. “I liked working on projects where success wasn’t just profit-oriented,” Yoonjin says, “but aimed at saving lives.” [...]

This post is the first in our Social Enterprise Initiative 25th anniversary blog series, which highlights some of the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who have been a part of SEI throughout the years. In this post, Jennifer Nash, Director of the HBS Business and Environment Initiative, shares her connection to SEI and her hopes for the future of social enterprise. [...]

Before coming to HBS, I worked for a number of years in financial services in Asia. It was not uncommon for me to wonder what real benefit, other than to provide my clients with the ability to make more money, I was providing to the world. That desire is one of the reasons I wanted to come to HBS. I recently took the class “Investing in the 21st Century: Return, Risk and Impact,” taught by Professors Shawn Cole and Vikram S. Gandhi. Through this class I learned that my previous career could actually provide a positive impact on the world, and that impact investing is becoming more mainstream in the United States. There are many impact funds that manage to achieve market rates of return while at the same time generate positive impact. In the past decade, the ability to measure impact has improved, enhancing the investor’s confidence in this sector. [...]

Business is the most powerful force humans have ever created. It’s been the source of both enormous peace and prosperity, as well as massive social and environmental disruption. The challenges facing humanity and our biosphere today require that we step away from outdated ways of thinking about the true role of business in society. These challenges call us to raise our game as business leaders so we can harness the enormous power of business and wield it for a better world. [...]