Youn Impact Scholars are an elite group of Kellogg students and alumni who are passionate about social impact. Highly regarded for their intellect, passion and drive, these innovators draw upon their business skills to create positive change in the world.
Endowed with a generous gift from Christopher and Courtney Combe in 2013, Youn Impact Scholars named its first cohort in 2014. A new group of Youn Impact Scholars is named each spring.
The application for the 2023 cohort of Kellogg Youn Impact Scholars is currently open. Applications will be due by January 15, 2023. Apply now.
Jonathan serves as the Executive Director of Innovation & Head of Chicago for Braven, managing strategy for two innovative products, program implementation, and partnerships with a range of educational institutions and employers. Braven is a leading national EdTech nonprofit supporting First-Generation, Pell-Eligible college students on their path to strong first jobs and upward economic mobility.
Prior to this, Jonathan held a variety of roles in recruitment, talent development, and program, for an array of nonprofit and corporate organizations including Teach For America, Noble Schools, ArcelorMittal, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, and McKinsey & Company. Jonathan is a 2017 Surge Institute Fellow, a 2018 Ricardo Salinas Scholar with the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Program, a 2020 Chicago Latino Network DE&I Honoree, and a 2020 Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leader. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa, a master’s in teaching from Dominican University, and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
A native of Chicago, Jonathan enjoys exploring the city and remaining engaged through philanthropic endeavors. Previously, he served on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Rowing Union, the Midwest’s only LGBTQA rowing organization. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Artists Coalition which supports emerging contemporary Chicago artists and curators and advances visual arts and its importance to Chicago’s culture and economy. Jonathan is also a part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Advisory Council on Small Business, Community and Economic Development, Agriculture and Labor. As an education advocate, he currently serves on the national Board of Directors for BES- which trains high-capacity individuals to take on the demanding and urgent work of leading high-achieving schools.
As a veteran of the impact investment space, Preeth offers 20+ years of experience across private equity investing, transaction design advisory and strategy consulting. Educated as an engineer, Preeth has focused his recent career on using financial innovation and transaction engineering to mobilize capital to tackle some of the deepest social and climate challenges facing developing regions of the world.
Preeth began his career in impact investing as far back as 2007, as one of the earliest team members of Lok Capital. As a fund manager that was at the time pioneering impact private equity, Lok Capital launched its first strategy by investing in and scaling microfinance institutions in India. Preeth supported on a number of investments in financial institutions, such as Ujjivan and Janalakshmi, which today are India's leaders in banking the underserved.
At Palladium Impact Capital, Preeth has led the US team of a one-of-a-kind investment bank dedicated to impact investing. Palladium Impact Capital works almost exclusively at the cutting edge of mobilizing impact private equity and debt by designing novel investment vehicles that are pushing the boundaries of innovation in impact investing. Preeth's focus in recent years has been in utilizing creative financial engineering to design 'blended finance' investments. With this view, he advises entrepreneurs, fund managers, non-profit organizations and corporations, on themes spanning financial services, agribusiness and healthcare in developing countries.
In addition to private sector impact investing, Preeth's career has crossed into both government service and academics. He has worked with the US Defence Department to use impact investing to bring greater stability to post-conflict regions within Afghanistan. Preeth has also been regularly guest lecturing a graduate class at Columbia's University's Earth Institute, on using blended finance innovation to scale climate impact. He is now launching a class in Social Entrepreneurship at New York University.
Soenda Howell is a Partner at Charter School Growth Fund, a non-profit philanthropic venture fund that identifies the country’s best charter schools, funds their expansion, and helps to increase their impact. In this role, Soenda leads the Seed investment strategy and team that is responsible for sourcing, investing, and supporting a national portfolio of early-stage charter networks, with a focus on those led by entrepreneurs of color and those operating in underserved communities with limited access to high-quality schools.
Previously, Soenda served as Director of Instructional Leadership on the KIPP Foundation’s Leadership Development Team. In this role, she provided direct support focused on instruction, leadership, and strategy to schools in emerging regions. In addition, she led and expanded three of the KIPP Foundation’s national and global leadership development fellowship programs for school founders – the Fisher Fellowship, the Global Fellowship and the Miles Family Fellowship. Soenda began her career in education as a Teach for America corps member and later transitioned to be a teacher and a principal in the KIPP network.
Soenda serves on the board for Girls on the Run Chicago, Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School, and the national advisory board of Teach for America’s Collective. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and has an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Tom Keleher is the Global Equity Director and an Executive Committee member of Oikocredit, a pioneer social impact investor with assets in excess of $1 billion. Tom heads the organization’s global private equity investment activities and manages a team of 18 investment professionals in 9 countries across 5 continents.
After graduating from the Kellogg School of Management, Tom taught Finance at Universidad San Francisco de Quito and performed consulting work in the Ecuadorian financial and agriculture sectors. After serving as a professor, Tom created and managed the Emerging Markets Fund at Newport Pacific Management in San Francisco where he also served as Head of Research, identifying technology applications to enhance valuation analysis, risk management and investment decisions.
In 2004, Tom returned to his home state to co-found New Mexico Community Capital, one of the first community development venture capital (CDVC) funds in the United States. He managed all investment activities for the fund. The organization leveraged his work to become certified as a CDFI with a mission to change the status quo in Native-owned businesses through tailored mentorship, financial literacy and digital skills programs.
In 2008, Tom moved with his family to The Netherlands where he joined Oikocredit in 2010 and has helped lead the growth of the private equity impact portfolio to a value of approximately $200 million. Over the course of the last twenty years, Tom has served as a board director and committee member for many companies focused on financial inclusion and renewable energy.
Tom served as a mentor for Endeavor Ecuador in 2021 and as a judge for the Inclusive Finance 50 business plan competition in 2022. He holds the CFA designation and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Colorado and a Master of Management degree from the Kellogg School of Management.
Michael Monteleone serves as the economic growth division chief for Asia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), based in Washington, DC.
His expertise includes engaging innovative private capital and blended finance in areas such as agriculture, trade, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and inclusive economic growth throughout Southeast Asia and South and Central Asia. He has led the design and management of several innovative development projects across Asia, including: the Regional Investment Support for Entrepreneurs (RISE) program, a collaborative technical assistance platform for high growth businesses with social impact in Southeast Asia; the Transaction Advisory Fund, an interagency tool to promote sustainable, high-quality infrastructure projects in the Indo-Pacific region; and the Asia Care Economy activity, a new platform to partner with leading private sector companies to support the care economy across Asia. He has also co-led USAID engagement on the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and previously served on the Agency’s Credit Review Board for several years. He was awarded the Arnold C. Harberger Award for Excellence in Economic Analysis, USAID’s highest honor for economic analysis, for his work analyzing the economic impacts of COVID-19 on the Indo-Pacific region.
Prior to USAID, he practiced corporate law in New York at a major international law firm, where he worked primarily with private equity clients on mergers and acquisitions, credit, and fund formation transactions. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University. He holds a A.B. with honors in Economics from the University of Chicago, a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law, and a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Nicole is passionate about social entrepreneurship and developing inclusive solutions. She firmly believes in the power of applying empathy to design and how the best solutions are rooted in engaging with those impacted by a challenge and co-creating together.
Prior to Kellogg, Nicole worked at Deloitte Consulting on design thinking and strategy projects for government and non-profit clients. Her projects focused on designing and informing solutions, policies, and programs for underserved constituent groups, such as the children of military families and healthcare practitioners. During that time, Nicole also worked pro-bono with Halcyon Incubator advising their social entrepreneurship fellows on their business strategy. She has an undergraduate degree in Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations from Brown University, where she learned to love entrepreneurship and to think critically about social impact.
Nicole founded Springrose, a social startup that she’s currently working on full-time, while at Kellogg. Springrose’s mission is to improve quality of life for women with limited mobility by developing adaptive intimate apparel that women can put on painlessly and independently; thereby giving women back their time, dignity, and independence. Nicole won multiple pitch competitions for Springrose, including first place at the Kellogg Venture Challenge and third place at VentureCat, and personally won the Kellogg Social Entrepreneur Award 2022 and the MMM Design & Innovation Award 2022. She was also a Kellogg Zell Fellow and worked to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem as co-president of the Kellogg Founders Club.
Björn is a ’23 Kellogg MBA candidate who is passionate about making a climate impact. As co-president of the Kellogg Energy & Sustainability Club, he is trying to build more awareness around sustainability to inspire Kellogg students to integrate sustainability within their career path. Through internships, he learned more about climate-tech entrepreneurship. At Elemental Excelerator, a climate-tech accelerator, he gained a better understanding of the intersection of climate and social impact entrepreneurship. At Living Carbon and Ebb Carbon, both carbon removal startups, he was able to use his business development experience from P&G to build go-to-market strategies for carbon removal technologies. Now, he is determined to apply what he learned full-time at climate impact startups.
Prior to Kellogg, Björn lived close to the Belgian coast. The large wind turbines that lined many of the roads were an early inspiration for him to study engineering. At Ghent University in Belgium, he delved into sustainability for the first time through his studies in sustainable materials engineering. His master’s thesis centered around material design to increase efficiency in nuclear fusion reactors, a now burgeoning field of research within clean energy. After graduating, he started a career in business development at Procter & Gamble, where he co-founded a local sustainability education team. Bringing in speakers and organizing sustainability initiatives, he fostered a growing sustainability mindset within the Belgian organization.
Next, Björn would like to continue pursuing his passion at the intersection of climate and innovation by working within climate impact entrepreneurship. In his spare time, you can find Björn running, cycling, reading books or exploring nature.
Clay Holk serves as Director of the Grants Management Office for the State of Oklahoma. In this role, he helped state and local governments respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and stood up the State's first Broadband Office, with the goal of providing high-speed internet to 95% of the state's residents. Before coming to the State, he led COVID response efforts at the City of Tulsa.
He is a recent graduate of the Kellogg School of Management (MBA) and the Harvard Kennedy School (Master's Degree in Public Policy). His thesis on Affordable Housing policy in Tulsa was awarded the Taubman Center Prize for Outstanding Research on Urban Issues. At HKS, Clay served as Chairperson for the 19th Annual Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard, the largest student conference on campus, which drew over 1,200 participants from across the field of Social Impact.
Before graduate school, Clay served as an Armor Officer in the United States Army. Prior to that, he worked in strategy and analytics at the American Red Cross in Washington, DC and JPMorgan Chase in New York City. In 2008, Clay received his Bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, where he studied International Relations. He originally hails from Magnolia Springs, Alabama. In his free time, Clay enjoys reading nonfiction, Southern cooking, live music and triathlons.
Zareen Khan is dedicated to driving positive impact across communities through public policy and impact-focused investments. She has worked in both the public and private sectors, leading a range of social and environmental initiatives, and has experience spanning advocacy, government, and impact investing.
Zareen manages a sustainability-focused startup accelerator program that invests in and supports founders from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds and communities, who are building solutions to address our climate crisis. Previously, Zareen served in Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s administration as Chief of Staff to the Illinois First Lady. In this role, she led the office’s initiatives on women’s justice and women’s reproductive health, and worked across government agencies and sectors to improve outcomes for justice-involved individuals and strengthen policies to protect a woman’s right to choose. During the height of the pandemic, Zareen also served as a core member of the testing team within the Illinois Department of Public Health that was tasked with expanding Illinois’ capacity for and accessibility to testing for COVID-19. She worked across stakeholder groups to ensure effective distribution, efficient use of resources, and more equitable access to testing across communities in Illinois.
Zareen began her career in politics, interning for US Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and later joining Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She also helped lead statewide operations for JB Pritzker’s successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Zareen remains politically engaged, advocating for and organizing across the Asian American community and serving as an advocate for marginalized communities.
Zareen is a first-generation Pakistani American and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. She is a former dance teacher turned amateur photographer, and enjoys runs and bike rides along Lake Michigan. Zareen graduated cum laude from Loyola University with a degree in Psychology and Business Administration and earned her MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Sara is a Private Sector Advisor for USAID Kenya/East Africa (KEA), forging partnerships for the regional Mission that enable it to achieve sustainable, locally-driven development outcomes. While mostly focused on economic development-- specifically increased trade from and within the continent, job creation, particularly for women and youth, and agriculture-led growth-- she works with USAID teams across East Africa to co-create activities with the private sector.
Sara began her career at Accenture Federal Services (AFS) in Washington DC, in the rotational Management Consulting Development Program. In addition to her client work, primarily focused on change management and technical implementation for various federal agencies and nonprofits, Sara led the Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP) Volunteer Community, overseeing 16 global hubs of volunteers working on development consulting projects. Post-MBA, she spent a year consulting for social enterprises and the Government of Rwanda with a small, U.S.-founded strategic consulting firm in Kigali.
Apart from her full-time engagements, Sara also spent two summers teaching English in the Dominican Republic, interned at a growth-stage ed-tech startup in Nairobi, and provides business consulting services for international organizations and investors looking to do business in Africa.
Sara earned her BA in International Studies and Spanish from Virginia Tech, and her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2019.
Joi Freeman is the Founder & CEO of Remnant Strategy, a consultancy working at the intersection of culture and commerce to help legacy and emerging businesses navigate the ever-evolving global terrain. As a strategist, youth culture enthusiast, and advocate for voices of vulnerable populations, Joi is regarded as a brand builder who connects the dots between corporate strategy, brand marketing, and social impact so discover their roadmap to inclusive growth.
In this last year, Freeman led engagements across the public, private, and non-profit sectors including clients ranging from arts education, tech, financial services, mental health, to economic development. Prior to founding Remnant Strategy, she developed brand strategies for a host of businesses including The Boston Consulting Group, the YMCA, Claire’s & Icing stores, the Girl Scouts, MoneyGram International, HOPE Worldwide, McDonald’s, and Burger King.
As a frequent presenter on issues impacting Gen Zs globally and specifically youth of color, Freeman is deeply committed to creating successful pathways for the next and most diverse generation to maximize their full potential. She was selected as one of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Class of 2021 Emerging Leaders, serves on several non-profit boards including alt_ Chicago, GirlForward, and Together Chicago, and is the Chicago City Director for Resource Global.
Freeman has an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Literature of the African Diaspora and Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Daniel is the President and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries – a coalition of ten coastal organizations helping to protect, restore and advocate for America’s coasts and coastal communities. In this role he leads the coalition in their legislative efforts, oversees federal and private sector partnerships, directs the largest coastal themed conference, and promotes thought leadership in coastal blue carbon and living shorelines.
Previously, Daniel was an advisor to the Paradise Foundation (China) and helped establish an ocean fund to increase protection of coasts and encourage sustainable fishing in the Pacific basin.
As Senior Director for Business Operations at the United Nations Foundation he oversaw grant making, finance, reporting, and human resource for the Digital Impact Alliance. Before joining the UN Foundation, he advised the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in designing two global campaigns to reduce marine litter (CleanSeas) and reduce wildlife trafficking (Wild for Life), recognized as one of the top 10 advocacy campaigns of 2016 by Weibo and winning a Webby Award.
Daniel began his career in conservation as the Senior Director of Global Programs at Rare, an international conservation NGO. His role integrated program development, performance management and impact reporting processes.
He has published on the role of performance management in improving NGO effectiveness, the role of marketing in promoting behavioral change, co-wrote standards on integrating human wellbeing into conservation projects. He has also conducted strategy and operations consulting with the firms MarketBridge, Oliver Wyman and the Corporate Executive Board.
Daniel earned his A.B. cum laude from Hamilton College in economics and history and his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He serves as Board Chair of the Washington Literacy Center and the technical advisory board of the Blue Initiative Fund of the Paradise Foundation.
Bryan was born and raised in the United States and did his undergraduate at Cornell University in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation, with a sense that he wanted to have a positive impact on the world but not yet having clarity of long-term goals, he decided to become a consultant with Accenture to build business knowledge and skillset. After three years at Accenture, he joined Nemesis Records, an Asian-American record label in order to build greater media representation for Asian-Americans. In 2008, after taking a class in social justice and doing volunteer work with several international organizations, Bryan developed an interest in international development and pursued his MBA at Kellogg. At Kellogg, as part of the CRTI program, Bryan did his summer internship in India working with small farmers. From that experience, he decided he wanted to come back to build a business to help small farmers. Bryan now heads Krishi Star (http://krishistar.com) in India, whose vision is to improve lives for smallholder farmers and deliver quality food to end customers by transforming agricultural value chains. Outside of work, Bryan is a regular guest lecturer for entrepreneurial courses at BITS and mentors professionals and entrepreneurs in values-driven work and business.
Dorri McWhorter became President and CEO of YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago in August 2021. Prior to joining the YMCA, Dorri served for 8 years as the CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago transforming the organization from a traditional social service organization to 21st Century social enterprise. Increasing impact and organizational sustainability, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago’s operating budget quadrupled. The organization has been an active contributor to many critical initiatives across the region, and under Dorri’s leadership, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago expanded its service footprint to 10 new locations, completed seven mergers and acquisitions, implemented paid family leave and developed a retirement plan to include retirement options for thousands of childcare providers and small business owners. Dorri led the effort to develop an exchange traded fund (ETF) for women’s empowerment (NYSE: WOMN) in partnership with Impact Shares, which is the first non-profit investment advisor to develop an ETF product. Dorri is a 2019 Inductee in the Chicago Innovation Hall of Fame.
Dorri prides herself on being a socially-conscious business leader and is committed to creating an inclusive marketplace by leveraging a cross-sector approach of engaging business, civic and community partners. Dorri serves on the Board of Directors for Lifeway Foods, William Blair Funds and Skyway Concession Company (Chicago Skyway). Dorri is also active in the accounting profession and serves on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council and having served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and a past Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the Illinois CPA Society. Dorri serves as Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the First Women’s Bank (in development). Dorri received a BBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lake Forest College.
Matt Saragih is the cofounder and Managing Director of PT Sosial Bisnis Indonesia, in short SOBI, an impact enterprise established in 2016 that builds collaboration with multi-stakeholders and utilizes ICT to deliver innovative sustainable land use management schemes. SOBI believes that an ideal solution needs to consider market demand and motivate local communities to be actively involved.
Over the past 5 years, SOBI has been partnering with communities across Indonesia to promote the sustainable land use management through agroforestry models. SOBI presents as a platform that not only establishes market connectivity through a centralized marketing channel but also provides comprehensive support that allows communities to get better income from agroforestry products. To date, SOBI has engaged over 3,500 farmers and impacted more than 15,000 beneficiaries.
Matt earned a Bachelor's degree in Finance from University of Indonesia. He then built expertise in the banking industry after working for 7 years combined in a strategic unit of the biggest bank in Indonesia named Bank Mandiri and as a consultant who mostly assigned in banking projects with McKinsey and Company. Driven by his call to create a more direct impact, Matt then worked on a local government project with Asian Development Bank and decided to further expand his knowledge by pursuing MBA at Kellogg School of Management with Social Enterprise as one of his majors.
After graduating from Kellogg in 2015, he fully immersed himself in the impact sector focusing on initiatives that aim to create a better distribution of wealth while preserving the condition of nature. Matt initially worked as a consultant in Marine Change in projects to empower communities to get better income while protecting marine life, before later cofounded SOBI that focuses on community-based sustainable land use management.
Ashley’s commitment to social impact is fueled by her life experiences and her understanding of how our actions can impact others.
Ashley is originally from the Washington, DC area and went to Pepperdine University in Los Angeles for her undergraduate degree. While there she studied sociology and conflict management and was a Posse Scholar dedicated to exemplifying values of leadership and inclusion. After graduating Ashley joined the Teach For America corps as a high school English teacher in Baltimore, MD. Her passion for teaching and education stemmed from her own experience with her teachers who had encouraged her to pursue college, even nominating her for the Posse Scholarship she was later awarded.
Given her passion for expanding opportunity for students, Ashley transitioned into the nonprofit space joining the Posse Foundation staff as a Career Program Manager. In this role she supported 600 Scholars and alumni in advancing Posse’s goal of diversifying leadership in the workforce. Ashley was the first alum of the program to serve on the senior team at Posse DC.
Ashley was later selected to join the 2019-2020 Cohort of the TFA Capitol Hill Fellows program where she served as a congressional staffer on the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee. During her time as a fellow Ashley worked on a variety of initiatives ranging from developing bills to address childhood trauma to curating hearings to review regulatory actions.
At Kellogg Ashley would value and contribute to the unique community by becoming engaged in CIM, BMA, KSA and Net Impact leadership. She also pursued social entrepreneurship in the Chicago area and participated in a host of consulting projects and field studies with social impact organizations throughout Chicagoland.
Sebastian is a ’22 MBA candidate from Chile at Kellogg where he is involved in Kellogg Latin American club and the Gender Equity Network. Sebastian is a recipient of the Zeta Chapter Delta Sigma Pi Scholarship based on his past achievements and background. Through the Gender Equity Network, he is trying to learn how relevant is for men to gather tools to be an ally in the Workplace. Through Kellogg Board Fellows, Sebastian serves as an ex-officio board member at Peer Health Exchange, learning how to serve a board, not only from the classroom but also from his diverse cohort experience. Outside Kellogg, Sebastian will be joining BCG Chicago Full-time and has spent his time at Kellogg exploring his future pathway along with Impact trying to take every opportunity to blend a market-based approach with social impact. That’s where he found Impact Investing and where he seeks to build a long-term career.
Before Kellogg, Sebastian has always been looking for ways to develop his toolkit to then use it to create social impact. He graduated from Universidad Catolica in Chile with an Industrials Engineering diploma. He focused his time at Universidad Catolica leading Catholic Missions and joining an impact-driven political movement Solidaridad UC. After graduating he chose to work in management consulting in MatrixConsulting to then use those tools to work as an Advisor at the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality within the Chilean Government where he led 5 parallel cross-functional projects with focus on increasing women’s economic autonomy within the country.
Sebastian is passionate about narrowing the inequality gap in Latin America especially in housing access and educational quality. In his free time, Sebastian loves to read, listen to reggaeton, and is passionate about soccer following his hometown team Universidad Catolica.
Sammy is passionate about developing solutions to close socioeconomic disparities that disproportionately affect people of color. She began her career researching the causes of and potential policy solutions for these disparities at the U.S. Department of Labor, the Wellesley Centers for Women, and MDRC. She later chose to pursue a career as a leader at a private or public sector organization that directly generates an impact. This led Sammy to move to the technology startup space so she could gain key skills, understand what it means to work in the private sector, and prepare for business school. Outside of work, Sammy has served as a Lead Volunteer for La Cocina, a non-profit incubator that helps immigrant and low-income women of color formalize their culinary businesses. She also served as Vice President of her alumni club.
While at Kellogg, Sammy serves as President of the Kellogg Student Association and as Co-Chair of the Black Management Association Conference. While serving as KSA President, Sammy has led key initiatives that target inclusivity and equitability for the diverse lived experiences that her classmates carry. She has also worked with administration leaders to create a more accessible path to Kellogg. Sammy was also a semifinalist in the 2021 John R. Lewis Racial Justice Case Competition alongside a team of Kellogg students. She is currently enrolled in Kellogg’s Social Impact GIM where she will study microenterprise development in Peru/Chile as well as in Kellogg Leading Voices where she will research optimum funding reinvestment following drug decriminalization policies.
Sammy is recruiting for a post-MBA role that has an impact within the education, healthcare, or financial empowerment space, and that builds the skills necessary to someday lead her own organization.
Nathan is passionate about bringing a customer service lens to strategic problems faced by social impact organizations. During his time at Kellogg, he focused on the application of marketing tools to grow mission-driven organizations and make them more effective.
Prior to his time at Kellogg, Nathan was a Research Analyst at the Urban Institute in Washington DC, where he managed cross-functional teams to evaluate new USDA pilot food delivery programs and produced recommendations to food banks on growth opportunities and service improvements. His publications focused on the state of food insecurity in the United States. Before working at the Urban Institute, Nathan was a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution, where he used modeling techniques and regression analysis to generate policy insights for policymakers in education. Nathan has an undergraduate degree in Mathematical Economics from Rice University, where he first developed an interest in developing data-driven policy solutions to social issues. As President of the Baker Institute Student Forum at Rice, he focused on connecting students with the Baker Institute for Public Policy and developing productive debate on campus regarding the issues studied by its policy experts.
At Kellogg, Nathan served as the Co-President of Net Impact. Through the Board Fellows Program, he was a board member at High Jump, a Chicago nonprofit providing educational enrichment programming for high achieving middle-schoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds. After graduating, Nathan will join Camber Collective’s San Francisco office as an Associate, where he will provide consulting services to a range of social impact organizations across the country. It is his long-term aim to make the delivery of public safety net benefits more equitable through innovative tools and strategies.
Megan Wenrich is mission driven leader who has channeled her energy into helping organizations partner with philanthropists, corporations and investors to change the world. She has a track record and reputation for launching new programs, elevating performance, and turning things around.
She’s currently leading a multi-year change effort at help The Nature Conservancy to increase fundraising results from $800M/yr to $1B/yr. She is responsible for improving the results and effectiveness of TNC’s decentralized team of 750 fundraisers who operate in 79 countries and all 50 states.
Megan has planned and participated in fundraising campaigns ranging from several million to several billion dollars. She has worked extensively with non-profit boards, individual philanthropists and has a knack for recruiting and building high performing teams. In addition to working in-house at non-profits for 20 years, she spent four years launching and growing a philanthropic consulting firm that serves nonprofit clients as well as individual philanthropists and foundations.
Much of Megan’s success in growing programs comes from on-the-job training and experimentation with program analysis, metrics, KPIs, analytics, structured listening, and formal assessments. She’s pursuing an MBA to grow her competency in these areas, learn from others who think differently, and explore opportunities to expand her impact and contributions to society and the planet.
Megan is a lifelong competitive rower, a mother of two, and finds respite in long walks in the woods, reading and yoga. She’s proud graduate of a women’s college, Hollins University, where she double majored in Biology and Environmental Studies. She also has a Masters in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School and spent four years lobbying on behalf of progressive companies to reform the tax code to incentivize renewable energy.
Tracey Fetherson, a native of Virginia and a United States Marine Corps veteran found her calling to serve early in life. A lifetime volunteer in youth sports and K12 education-focused organizations, Tracey has always sought opportunities to give back to institutions that have given so much to her. During her military service as a logistics officer, she completed two deployments, including one combat tour to Afghanistan in support of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM. Upon transitioning from the military, Tracey took her service beyond the uniform, seeking ways to create broader social change by leveraging the resources and expertise of private corporations.
While at Kellogg, Tracey served as a vice president in the Education Club, Black Management Association and Kellogg Student Association, fostering her desire to give back to the institution. Tracey also serves on the junior board of the Ryan Banks Academy, a mentor with Admit.me MBA admissions program for students of color and veterans. During her summers at Kellogg, Tracey interned with Education Pioneers at a charter school in Memphis, TN and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the K-12 Education team developing their COVID-19 recovery strategic plan. Upon graduation, she will sharpen her strategic focus in the 2-year corporate strategy rotation at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Aaron Morales is a sustainability, ESG and business development professional specializing in helping corporations and financial institutions use data, science, and technology to quantify ESG performance, communicate positive impacts and inform impactful decisions.
Currently, Aaron works as an Account Director and ESG Specialist at S&P Global Sustainable1, a group within S&P Global that brings together ESG and Climate benchmarking, analytics, evaluations, and indices. Aaron works with companies and investors across the central USA and Latin America. Prior to joining S&P Global, Aaron worked as a Business Development Management Consultant of ESG data management technology solutions at UL. Before that, Aaron worked as consultant at a boutique sustainability consultancy firm in Mexico helping companies define their sustainability strategies. Aaron spent six months interning at Robert Bosch’s HQ in Germany, where he conducted research on hydrogen fuel cells.
Aaron holds a BS in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Environmental Systems from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), an MS in Environmental Management and Sustainability from Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Aaron is originally from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Josh is passionate about leveraging the strengths of the public and private sectors towards solving the world’s most persistent challenges related to poverty, education, and criminal justice. A Boston native, mediocre skier and volleyballer, and global traveler, Josh excels at finding questionable street food and getting lost down unknown streets around the world.
In his first full-time job after college, Josh joined Teach For America as an 8th grade writing teacher in Dorchester, MA. There, Josh developed innovative curricular materials and led his students to 95% “advanced” or “proficient” scores – among the best scores in the state. Interested in expanding the scope and impact of his work, Josh pivoted into international education – first at a media literacy nonprofit in Cameroon, and later at Bridge International Academies, a provider of low-cost private schools and government-funded charter schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Most recently, Josh served as founding Academic Director of Bridge’s charter school intervention in Liberia, where he helped found a chain of 68 charter schools providing education to over 25,000 students daily. In the first year of operations, a randomized controlled trial demonstrated that students in these charter schools learned over 1 standard deviation more in English and math – equivalent to one extra year of content in just 10 months.
Josh is currently completing a dual JD/MBA at Kellogg. He holds a B.A. in English from Amherst College and a Master’s in Education from Boston University. At Kellogg, Josh served as VP of Professional Development for Net Impact, VP of Careers for the JD/MBA Association, and has participated in numerous case competitions and internships in Chicagoland. Upon graduation, Josh will join Social Finance’s Boston office as Associate Director and Staff Attorney, where he will support efforts to create pay-for-success contracts between governments, impact investors, and impactful service providers.
Sam Schiller is a climate impact entrepreneur and environmental policy advocate based in Chicago. He helped launch and scale two related environmental startups - Wabashco and Tradewater - which focus on carbon offset development through the destruction of CFC refrigerants and methane emitting from abandoned coal mines. These projects were among the first credited under California’s compliance emissions reduction initiative. Under Sam’s leadership, this work produced 21 carbon offset projects that generated over 2 million tons of greenhouse gas reductions.
Since exiting Tradewater in the spring of 2018, Sam has focused on utilizing environmental markets to advance carbon sequestration in agricultural landscapes. In 2019, Sam founded Carbon Yield, where he has utilized his deep experience in carbon markets and agricultural communities to better align farm profitability with soil health and land stewardship. Carbon Yield has worked closely with eminent scientific, agronomic, and philanthropic institutions to improve opportunities for farmers in carbon markets and unlock scalable climate solutions. Carbon Yield also designed a financial product that serves large grain farmers, allowing them to stay cash positive through transitions to more profitable, climate resilient practices. His work with Carbon Yield earned the Zell Fellowship, Kellogg School of Management's premier entrepreneurial program. Carbon Yield presented its fund model in Hong Kong and won the 2019 Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge. The model was also recognized by Fast Company in its World Changing Ideas series.
Sam serves as Board Chair of the Delta Institute, a nonprofit with deep experience in environmental markets, regenerative agriculture, and conservation finance. Sam graduated with a degree in social policy and environmental policy from Northwestern University and will complete his MBA from Kellogg in 2021. He is an avid urban cyclist and lives in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago with his wife, Rebecca, and their enchanting one year old son, Theo.
Becky Betts is the chief marketing and external affairs officer at A Better Chicago. In this role, Becky leads the organization’s marketing and communications, strategic partnerships, and development work. She seeks to elevate A Better Chicago’s brand at the local and national levels while maintaining and cultivating relationships across sectors to garner the resources required to achieve A Better Chicago’s mission to fight poverty with opportunity.
Becky’s track record for developing and implementing innovative social impact initiatives includes launching Chicago CRED—a foundation focused on reducing gun violence through philanthropy, direct service programs, community engagement, and advocacy—with former United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. As chief of staff, Becky led the creation of a direct-service, anti-violence program and established collaborative partnerships with city agencies and community-based nonprofits to enable rapid expansion, including employment of more than 5,000 high school students each summer through the City of Chicago’s One Summer program. On the advocacy side, she organized events to engage young adults from Chicago’s South and West side neighborhoods in local and national conversations around gun violence prevention. Prior to her time at Chicago CRED, Becky provided strategic guidance to a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies as a management consultant with PwC and A.T. Kearney.
Becky is on the board of directors for Advance Illinois, a nonprofit policy and advocacy organization that works towards building a healthy public education system for Illinois. She also serves on the board of Fishtank Learning, a national nonprofit focused on providing high-quality, open-sourced instructional content for K-12 educators. Becky holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s of business administration from Northwestern University.
Jeffrey Burrell is the Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Riot Games, a video game company with over 25 offices around the world that engages 100 million active players each month. He is also the Executive Director of the Riot Games Social Impact Fund, an independent philanthropic venture fund focused on improving the areas of STEM education, access to equal opportunity, mental health, and online citizenship.
In his role at Riot Games, he started the CSR department from an initial concept into a $15M+ / year business unit and oversees all of Riot's social impact investments, grantmaking, sustainability efforts, employee engagement, and social impact corporate policy.
Riot's in-game fundraisers have raised over $20M to date for more than 100 charities around the world, engaging over 10 million players, and have won multiple awards and international recognition.
Prior to Riot Games, Jeffrey worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he was on the Strategy and Finance team working on the Education portfolio. He started his career as a management consultant in Silicon Valley, worked with microfinance institutions in Tanzania, and consulted on precision-drip agriculture projects in the Middle East. Jeffrey holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BS from the University of Montana.
John is the Founder of Kind Capital, an impact investing platform and investment firm to drive scalable sustainable impact profitably. He was formerly the Managing Director and Founder of Lumina Impact Ventures, the $50M impact investing arm of Lumina Foundation. Previously he was Program & Portfolio Officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, managing a $110+ million MRI and PRI investments portfolio across funds and direct investments, and making grants to further the field of impact investing. John started his career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch in various roles including M&A advisory, credit risk analysis, equity research, capital structure optimization and corporate finance in both debt and equity products. John has extensive for-profit and nonprofit board experience including Cell-Ed, Upswing, BrightHive, EduNav, Credly, Global Communities, Vitas Group, and AAPIP.
John earned his BA degree in economics and East Asian studies from Yale University and holds an Executive MBA, with a concentration in management and entrepreneurship, from the Kellogg School of Management. He is a Kauffman Fellow. Born in Cambodia, John immigrated to the U.S. at a young age. He and his parents are survivors of the Khmer Rouge concentration camp and were sponsored to the United States by the Catholic Sisters of St. Francis in La Crosse, WI where he grew up.
Axel Kadja, based on the reading of Eric Ries’ book Lean Start Up, founded in 2020 Intellinvest, an initiative aiming at improving problem solving skills of Ivorian Bachelor and Master students. At the professional level, Axel joined TechnoServe in May 2018 as Country Manager for Côte d'Ivoire where he has been supporting various agricultural value chain projects added to several urban entrepreneurship initiatives.
Prior to joining TechnoServe, Axel worked for five years with Cargill in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. In Côte d'Ivoire, Axel led the company’s sustainable sourcing strategy, focusing on access to finance for cooperatives and cocoa trade digitalization. He launched the Coop Academy project, a Mini EMBA for cocoa cooperative managers in addition to the joint IFC-Cargill truck leasing project, Doni Doni, the first financing scheme between the Ivorian banking sector and a large portfolio of 80 cocoa cooperatives. This project was awarded at the Food and Ingredient Europe forum in Paris in December 2015. In Ghana, Axel contributed to the set-up of the first digital cocoa purchasing scheme in the country. The scheme currently facilitates daily e-payment transactions between Cargill and 25,000 farmers. Prior to Cargill, Axel was Country Manager for the European Institute for Cooperation & Development-Ivory Coast where, between 2005 to 2012, he contributed to the set-up of a Family Farm Schools network that still exists today.
Axel is a Kellogg EMBA graduate. A father of 3 children, Axel regularly practices table tennis, swimming, biking and running (while listening NPR Hidden Brain Podcasts) and is currently enrolled in a comedy class. His main sources of inspiration are Herb Kelleher ,Greg Page (ex Cargill CEO), and Jack Ma.
Kartik is a serial impact entrepreneur having founded 2 social ventures centred around creating value for small landholder farmers in India. His first venture Claro Energy, one that he co-founded with a Kellogg classmate, provides innovative, affordable & reliable solar irrigation solutions for farmers across India. Claro Energy engineered India’s first large scale community solar irrigation system back in 2011 and is now pursuing its award winning Pay-As-You-Go solar irrigation concept. His second venture Claro Agro, is a Farm to Retailer Agri commerce enterprise that provides market linkage services to their small land holder solar irrigation farmers. Claro Agro uses technology to bring transparency & efficiency to a broken Agri supply chain in which small land holder farmers have no leverage. Prior to Kellogg, Kartik spent several years in the Electrical Switchgear industry in India, including a stint at Larsen & Toubro, India’s largest engineering conglomerate.
In 2017, he was awarded the Asian Entrepreneurship Award, hosted by the University of Tokyo & Mitsubishi Fudosan in Japan. He is also the recipient of the Amit Leadership award in 2018. In 2013, leading business publication, BusinessWorld, featured him amongst ‘India’s Hottest Young Entrepreneurs’. He is also an active speaker on Impact Entrepreneurship and Innovation at several premier Business Schools in India and regularly contributes to various print & digital publications in India.
He is an Electrical Engineer from Bharti Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Pune, and holds an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship & Innovation from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Bhargavi Ammu is a second year MBA student at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to Kellogg she spent four and a half years in the Global Health Bureau of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington D.C. At USAID, she worked in the Health Systems Office, increasing visibility for USAID efforts in health systems strengthening by leading a pilot call for success stories. She was also a program analyst in the Office of HIV/AIDS, and traveled to 15+ countries across southern Africa and southeast Asia to provide strategic, budgetary and operational support for $1.6 billion in investments..
Bhargavi has an undergraduate degree in Health & Societies and South Asian Studies with a minor in International Development from the University of Pennsylvania. At Kellogg, Bhargavi was an Impact Consultant for a Chicago based healthcare nonprofit, was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the Women’s Business Association and is the Director of Speakers for a global health panel at the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference. After graduation Bhargavi will return to GlaxoSmithKline where she interned, to join a leadership development rotational program where she will continue the work of improving global health outcomes.
Hanna has been always a caregiver, a healthcare advocate, and a devoted leader across the social impact space. Growing up in a family of psychologists, Hanna witnessed both the professional and personal sides of mental health. As a social entrepreneur and founding member of B-Vitals, Hanna supports the growth and customer acquisition to expand mental health access for children and teens. B-Vitals is a comprehensive behavioral health assessment tool designed for early detection of mental health issues for children ages 4-18 that empowers pediatricians as the first line of care.
Prior to joining the B-Vitals team, Hanna was a management consultant at Deloitte focused in commercial healthcare strategy, where she advised integrated health systems to advance patient medical record access and interoperability. She also served as a Fellow in innovation and business operations at Sanergy, a sanitation social enterprise in Kenya. Hanna has work experience with a leading venture philanthropy fund and with U.S. Congress focused on health policy. Hanna graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and is currently pursuing an M.B.A. (June 2020) from Kellogg School of Management.
Brent leads the Fund Management team at New Markets Support Company (NMSC), where he is responsible for the management of NMSC’s investment fund portfolio, structuring investments funds and client relations. He works with investors, community development organizations and capital providers across the country to develop and close specialty impact loan funds.
Prior to joining NMSC, Brent was a Fund Manager at National Equity Fund (NEF) for five years, where he structured and managed affordable housing investment funds, closing $1 billion in investments while overseeing part of NEF’s $10 billion portfolio. Brent holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, finance and real estate from the University of Northern Iowa and is currently an M.B.A. candidate at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, where he serves as the VP of Finance for Kellogg’s Net Impact chapter. Brent is also a long-serving delegate for Hummingbird Missions, which brings medical services to rural communities in Haiti and El Salvador.
Sinthuja found her passion for education in college when she joined a student-run tutoring organization called Project Literacy. As Executive Director, she was excited to lead and scale the organization to a staff of 18 with more than 150 tutors working at 6 different community sites through Los Angeles.
After graduating, she started her career as an economic consultant at Cornerstone Research, developing a strong set of technical and analytical skills. During her free time, she continued to stay involved in education by volunteering on the Young Professionals Board for a larger charter system in Los Angeles. After visiting one of their high schools, she made the leap to pursue a career in education full-time. She joined Teach for America and became a high school math teacher. While teaching, she received her teaching credential and a Master’s in Education in Urban Teaching. Interested in having a greater impact than just her classroom, she joined Summit Public Schools and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to help scale their personalized learning initiative and quantify their impact.
Sinthuja started at Kellogg with a commitment to use this time to explore social entrepreneurship. She is now the Founder and CEO of Tilt, an education technology company focused on creating a more student-centered and inclusive college financial aid process. She is also the president of the Education Club, a Zell Fellow, and Garage Resident. She continues to be excited about technology’s potential to help address problems in our education system.
Sam is an MBA candidate at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management where she is concentrating in public-private collaboration, specifically within industries at the intersection of government and technology.
Before beginning her MBA, Sam was part of the leadership team at grassroots democracy organization, Swing Left. Sam launched the Local Communications Network ahead of the 2018 midterms, managing the recruitment and training of 10K+ campaign volunteers in 72 swing districts across the U.S.
Prior to Swing Left, Sam led U.S.-China cultural diplomacy programs at Brown Lloyd James, a New York City-based international affairs firm. In her role, Sam hosted delegations of former congressman and journalists across different parts of China and facilitated meetings on such issues as environmental policy, government relations, and human rights. Sam came to BLJ from Edelman Public Relations. At Edelman, she was part of the New York public affairs team where she led grassroots initiatives for civics organizations and women’s rights foundations.
At the center of each of Sam’s experiences, personal and professional, is the commitment to addressing the real challenges facing underrepresented populations - particularly immigrant, non-white, lgbtq+ and low-income communities, with special devotion to the women within them.
Andres Idarraga is passionate about sustainable economic development and about the provision of educational opportunities to people in distressed circumstances. In 2019, he co-founded Creci (pronounced kre-si, and in Spanish a play on the word “to grow”), a fintech platform that connects social impact investors in the U.S. with social impact small businesses in the U.S. and Latin America that need credit facilities. Creci has built a suite of online tools that will allow small businesses to identify, measure, and report their impact. Creci believes that that if small businesses had easy-to-use tools that would help them identify, measure, and report their impact, they could better attract funding from large number of investors interested in impact investing.
Andres is also the co-founder of the Transcending Through Education Foundation (“TTEF”). TTEF provides resources and support services to people in U.S. prisons who are pursuing post-secondary education. Since 2011, TTEF has awarded almost 30 scholarships, funded six 20-person community college courses at a maximum-security prison, conducted annual workshops inside prisons on applying to college with a criminal record, and provided mentors to select awardees. As a personal project, he awards modest college scholarships to high school students in Cocorna, Colombia, a small town where his family is originally from. Andres believes economic and education opportunities are the key pillars of healthy and vibrant communities.
His beliefs and passions stem from personal experience. Andres grew up poor and turned to education while serving time in prison as a young man. Education saved his life. After his release, he earned bachelor’s degrees from Brown University and a law degree from Yale University. He then practiced law at Boies, Schiller & Flexner. In 2016, he left to work at a fintech startup before founding Creci and enrolling in Kellogg’s Executive MBA program.
Thomas Liu is the Deputy Regional Director for the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Pacific Region, which manages energy resources offshore the West Coast and Hawaii. Thomas has a variety of experience in the government and private sector.
In the government, he served as Chief of Concessions for Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, as a Presidential Management Fellow at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and completed the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program.
In the private sector, he worked in investment banking for Merrill Lynch, corporate development for Level 3 Communications, product management for Zurich Insurance, and as an investment analyst for a Hong Kong based hedge fund.
Thomas earned a BS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and completed the Senior Executive Fellows certificate program from Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government.
James Margolis is a Senior Partner with ERM, the world’s largest pure-play environmental, health, safety and sustainability (EHSS) consultancy, with over 5,000 staff in 140 offices in 40 countries. He is one of ERM’s senior management consulting practitioners and a nationally recognized expert in EHSS governance and management systems.
Over the last 30 years of his career, Jimmy has been on the front line of corporate sustainability, having helped dozens of major companies develop and implement EHSS strategies and programs, contributing to significant reductions in environmental impacts, safety incidents, and costs, while strengthening corporate relationships and reputation with external stakeholders. He works with leaders across functional areas and organizational levels to identify EHSS-related business risks and opportunities, develop strategies to address those risk and opportunities based on a robust business case, and then implement those strategies from the corporate level down through plant-level operations.
During the course of his career, he has visited hundreds of industrial sites, developed and led several hundred EHSS management seminars and workshops, and trained literally thousands of people on EHSS topics. He has published articles in GreenBiz, Environmental Leader, and various other industry newsletters, and spoken at multiple Conference Board, GreenBiz, GRI and NAEM conferences.
Prior to joining ERM, Jimmy spent eleven years with Arthur D. Little and six years with Deloitte. He started his career as an engineer at an oil refinery. Jimmy also served on the Board of a 501(c)(3) organization, Mwangaza, which provided on-the-ground health education and medical services to remote underserved communities in Tanzania (2000-2011).
Lara Metcalf has deep experience in the public and private sectors, focused on driving better outcomes for low income and vulnerable populations using innovative investment capital approaches to solve our nation's most pressing problems. She is currently a Managing Director at TSEF: The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund, an early stage (series A+) venture fund investing in healthtech, fintech, and human services tech, including “Future of Work”, to improve access and economic opportunity for low income communities. Two-thirds of the companies in their portfolios are led by women or minorities. Lara believes that we can use capital and markets to drive sustainable positive change in the world.
Prior to joining TSEF, Lara was a Fellow at The Engine, a VC fund founded by MIT that aims to bridge the gap between discovery and commercialization of “tough tech” solutions. Lara previously played a leadership role in building the Pay for Success field during her five years as the Managing Director of Social Finance, an innovative 501c3 social enterprise, where she led the creation of $80M+ in project finance impact investments around issues ranging from refugee and immigrant employment, to child welfare, to maternal and child health, to recidivism. Prior to Social Finance, Lara was the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer at the Harvard Kennedy School. Lara spent the first 18 years of her career on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, where she achieved the title of Managing Director. Lara currently serves on the board for Longfellow Investment Management, an $11 billion MWBE fixed income/alternative institutional investment manager. She has been an active volunteer in a number of education, microfinance, and refugee-focused organizations. She is a proud alum of Boston College and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and lives with her husband and children in the Boston area.
Prentiss Taylor Jr., MD, FACP, currently serves as Vice President of Medical Affairs at Doctor On Demand, a leading innovative national telemedicine company. There he is currently co-leading national health initiatives with Walmart, Humana, United Airlines, and several other national companies. He is also a blog writer for the Kellogg Business of Healthcare Conference 2020.
He was awarded the Unsung Hero Award by WGN-TV for his volunteer work at a free clinic. Prentiss has volunteered as guest lecturer for the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple Seven program, has spoken to church groups, and has appeared on local radio stations in support of Hypertension Awareness and Control. He is involved with three local mentoring programs for students as well as on the National Alumni Council of National Medical Fellowships, which gave him a scholarship to Harvard Med School.
He has most recently been Medical Director at Advocate Aurora Health Care, the largest health system in the Midwest. At Advocate, he was the physician leader running the JP Morgan Chase employee health service in downtown Chicago and suburbs. He also had responsibility for launching Advocate’s successful Patient Centered Medical Homes sites.
Prentiss is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, the Kellogg Business School, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Prentiss is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine. He has been chosen as a Top Doctor by Chicago Magazine, Castle Connolly, and US News, multiple times, including in 2018. He has served as a local medical director for Blue Cross Blue Shield and for United Healthcare. He has previously been a faculty member of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Dwight Hopkins is currently the Alexander Campbell Professor at the University of Chicago, where he teaches courses on social entrepreneurship and wealth and culture in global relationships and within the United States. Hopkins is a member of Z.H. Island International U.S.A. (July 2018 to present) and a Board Member, Global Corporate Social Responsibility Foundation (July 2018 to present).
In 2005, Hopkins founded and managed a 14-country not-for-profit startup, network. With representatives from Hawaii, Fiji, Australia, Japan, India, England, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, and the USA, the network increased learning about neighbors through neighbors sharing their cultures.
After graduating from Harvard University in 1976 with a focus on Afro-American Studies and global political economy, Hopkins spent 5 years as a community organizer in New York. He then went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City for graduate degrees, focusing on global comparative cultures.
Hopkins prides himself on his ability to source international deals and his ability to bridge cultures. He wants to participate in social impact investments where resources are used for the double bottom line – increasing profit and helping people and the environment.
Sahar, Kellogg MBA'19, is the Founder of Maziwa, the only breast pump specifically designed for working mothers in developing markets. Prior to Kellogg, her career focused on developing healthcare solutions and award winning marketing campaigns for organizations like Johnson & Johnson. Now, she aims to improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations in developing regions like East Africa where her dad was born.
In this pursuit, she interned as a Business Development Associate at Jacaranda Health, a social enterprise start up in Nairobi, focused maternal and newborn health. Through this experience, she developed the concept of Maziwa when she learned about the life-saving powers of breastmilk and interacted with mothers who struggled to breastfeed their babies.
Sahar leads Kellogg’s Net Impact Club and her academic and extracurricular involvements intersect healthcare and social entrepreneurship. Sahar was born in Vancouver, Canada and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce & Arts Dual Degree from Queens University.
Megha is passionate about expanding access to quality healthcare around the world.
She brings multi-level perspectives from her time in pharmaceutical and MedTech pricing consulting at Simon-Kucher & Partners and in product innovation for U.S. healthcare providers at Lumere. Having seen first-hand that both medical product design and business models can get in the way of optimally serving patients, Megha’s mission is to take a patient-first approach to designing better healthcare products and systems.
Megha’s trilingual upbringing speaking English, Telugu, and French exposed her to a unique appreciation of cross-cultural conversation and learning. She hopes to bring this perspective to the healthcare world as she joins Medtronic’s Leadership Development Rotational Program after Kellogg. Her focus will begin in Medtronic Labs – an incubator developing new solutions for global health access.
Megha graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Health & Societies and will complete her an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in June 2019.
Lauren is passionate about ending the deep injustices and inequity in our world through the intersection of public and private action.
After graduating with a degree in history and psychology from Tufts University, Lauren worked as a non-profit consultant at M+R Strategic Services, working with organizations ranging from AARP and the American Red Cross to Mayo Clinic and the Human Rights Campaign. While there, she managed the team that deployed the Human Rights Campaigns digital marketing efforts to secure LGBT marriage equality across the U.S., culminating in the award-winning Red Logo campaign on Facebook after the Supreme Court Decisions in 2013.
From there, Lauren moved to Oxfam where she managed Oxfam’s US-based marketing program, engaging millions of Americans through advocacy and fundraising on major humanitarian emergencies including the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the ongoing global refugee crisis.
Lauren is currently completing her MBA with a finance major at Kellogg and serving as a Co-President of Kellogg’s Net Impact club. While at Kellogg, Lauren interned with national CDFI New Markets Support Company where she overhauled their impact management and reporting system and supported portfolio management activities.
Han-Wei is dedicated to integrating his business and medical experiences and capabilities to increase access to quality healthcare for all pediatric patients and their families. Han-Wei graduated cum laude from Northwestern University with a double major in Biological Sciences and Psychology and a minor in Chinese language and culture. He is now a MD/MBA candidate at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Kellogg School of Management. Prior to Kellogg, Han-Wei utilized his medical training and public health advocacy to create positive impacts in the community. As a public health researcher with the Injury Prevention and Research Center of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, Han-Wei identified risk factors and recommended target interventions in pediatric injury prevention to decrease the number of preventable sleep-related deaths. He evaluated data on pediatric window falls to determine the effects of Chicago city-wide interventions and also taught children practical nutrition lessons in underserved communities for Chicago Youth Programs (CYP), a non-profit organization offering comprehensive programs to serve at-risk youth living in Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Han-Wei has published his findings and presented his work at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conferences and Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting. At Feinberg, Han-Wei directed monthly student-led, cross-functional free clinics in Chinatown, providing Hepatitis B screenings, vaccinations, and health counseling to underserved Asian populations. As president of the Asian Pacific American Medical School Association (APAMSA), he highlighted the Asian/Asian American experience at the medical school community through coordinated events while establishing a permanent seat for the Asian/Asian American voice on the medical school’s Diversity and Inclusion Council. Currently, he is working with Lurie Children’s Hospital to investigate and evaluate the impact of CYP on the youth and communities it serves by applying his business skillsets and medical/public health experiences. Han-Wei looks forward to creating further impact in healthcare by leveraging his medical/public health training and business skillsets to solve challenges across divisions within a hospital system as well as the greater healthcare system.
Hydie Kim Hudson is a Director at Social Finance, a national nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing capital to drive social progress. As an impact investing intermediary, Social Finance brings uncommon partners together around a common purpose: to measurably improve the lives of those in need.
In her role at Social Finance, Hydie designs and implements outcomes-based financing structures using the principles of Pay for Success: clearly defined outcomes, data-driven decisions, uncommon cross-sector partnerships, strong governance and accountability, and catalytic capital to drive impact.
Prior to joining Social Finance, Hydie worked as New Ventures Director for One Acre Fund in East Africa, incubating new programs and services for the organization to generate more scalable impact. Hydie started her career in management and strategy consulting. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University.
In his role as President/CEO of Fabretto, Kevin oversees operations in Nicaragua, Europe and the United States, focusing primarily on fundraising and representing Fabretto as chief spokesperson before public and private donors.
Kevin first traveled to Nicaragua in 1989 as part of a Georgetown University volunteer program, where he met Father Rafael Maria Fabretto and was introduced to Father Fabretto’s work with Nicaraguan children who were living in extreme poverty, or had been abandoned by their families. After Father Fabretto’s untimely death in 1990, Kevin took on a leadership role establishing a much-needed organizational structure to continue Father Fabretto’s work with disadvantaged children. Since then, Kevin has dedicated his life to developing Fabretto’s mission to offer hope and opportunity to Nicaragua’s poorest children.
Under Kevin’s stewardship, Fabretto has grown to an established organization with registered non-profit status in Nicaragua, the U.S., and Spain. The organization serves over 30,000 students and families with a budget of US $ 5 m, and a staff of 275 colleagues. Kevin earned his BA in American Studies from Georgetown University in 1989 and his MBA from the Kellogg Business School in 1996. Kevin lives in Managua with his wife, Manely, and their son, Nicolas.
Michael is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Big Path Capital, “impact investing’s investment bank”, a boutique impact investment bank focused on providing Corporate Finance, M&A, and Placement Agent services to impact companies and funds globally. Big Path has worked with over 180 impact and sustainable companies and funds, more than any firm in the sector.
In 2007 the old economy driven by the single gear of profit maximization reached a dead end in the financial crisis. It was a moment of reckoning during which Michael left his fifteen-year career in private equity to form Big Path Capital with his partner, Shawn Lesser, leveraging the engine of capitalism for an expansive economy built on natural, social, and financial capital. Recognizing that impact investing isn’t just a different way of investing but a superior way of deploying capital, Michael is committed to challenging the status quo and to raising the expectation of capital.
In this vein, Big Path has created a number of initiatives demonstrating that impact investing represents a better way to deploy capital. These include the Five Fund Forum, Impact Capitalism Summit, and Impact & Sustainable Trade Missions.
Michael received his BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN and received a joint MBA and MEM (Master of Engineering Management) from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Michael is an advisory board member of the Croatan Institute and is a member of the Social Venture Network and Net Impact.
Megan is a global responsibility manager on Starbucks Social Impact team, where she leads strategic programs and corporate partnerships that help to connect populations who have faced employment barriers to jobs and career opportunities. In this role, Megan defines and executes program strategy, develops resources and tools, and builds and manages relationships with key internal and external partners. She also serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, a coalition of companies Starbucks co-founded that is committed to hiring and supporting Opportunity Youth.
Previously, Megan was a strategy consultant at Deloitte Consulting. There, she collaborated with cross-sector stakeholders to develop organizational strategy, launch new initiatives, and measure program progress and impact. Megan has also worked for three nonprofit organizations, analyzing programs and designing new strategies to better meet the needs of disadvantaged communities.
Megan is passionate about the power of business to make a positive social impact at a global scale, and has worked abroad in Africa, Latin America, and Oceania in the pursuit of that passion. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she was an FC Austin Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland.
Victoria serves on the Global Supply Chain & Sustainability team at McDonald's. Her current role integrates risk management, contingency and sustainability strategies to be rolled out around the globe. Her previous role as a buyer for the US integrated sustainability into the core business while she managed >$2B in spend including Beef, Cheese, Coffee, Tea and Fish. She led national platforms for these products increasing sustainable supply and working with the industry to transform supply chains.
Prior to being a commercial buyer in the US, Victoria led multiple cross-functional sustainability strategies in the Global Sustainability Group with a focus on environmental and social impact. She was a leader in driving impact by transforming waste into resources by developing and executing the first ever McDonald’s food recovery program resulting in >5M lbs. of safe nutritious food feeding local communities.
Prior to joining McDonald’s, Victoria held several positions at UBS Financial Services and the Chicago Wolves. She has worked as a consultant developing growth strategies and marketing for sustainable low income housing in Nicaragua, as well as a consultant leading corporate partnership strategies for the UN Humanitarian Envoy.
Victoria holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public/Environmental Affairs from Indiana University, a Master’s Degree in Human Capital Management from Utah State University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. She is originally from Barrington, IL and spent her youth competing in sports.
Elissa Densborn is the director of risk management for MPI Corporation, a growing, multi-corporate, multi-national holding company headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind. Prior to that, she worked for PwC in Chicago, providing assurance services to clients in the utility, manufacturing, logistics and healthcare industries. She also has had public sector internships with the White House National Economic Council, the Mitch Daniels’ 2004 Gubernatorial Campaign and the Office of the Indiana Lieutenant Governor.
Elissa is committed to serving her communities with her business acumen. She has led United Way, Junior Achievement and Indianapolis Zoo fundraising campaigns, and currently supervises an underprivileged student at Providence Cristo Rey High School, teaching her skills necessary to succeed in the business world. Through involvement in Kellogg Corps, Elissa has become an adviser to Byoearth, a social impact startup in Guatemala that creates vermicomposting systems to sustain the environment and enhance the living conditions of Guatemala’s most vulnerable populations. Elissa plans to drive Byoearth’s expansion into the United States and further its mission for international sustainable development.
Elissa graduated with honors and high distinction from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business with a Bachelors of Science in Accounting and Finance. She expects to earn her MBA from Kellogg in June 2014 with concentrations in Entrepreneurship, Management, Strategy, and Marketing.
Elissa plans to use her Kellogg MBA to create positive social impact through application of her business acumen. Specifically, her efforts to internationalize Byoearth’s vermicomposting system are motivated by a desire to address inefficiencies in, and increase the security of, the global food system, to address food health and environmental challenges worldwide, and to drive sustainable socio-economic development.