NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The likes of Harvard and Wharton are teaching investing for both financial and social benefit.

Danielle Reed was already an impact investor when she stepped onto the campus of the University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Business in 2013 — though her family didn’t know it. They thought she worked at a nonprofit. But Reed actually worked for San Francisco-based boutique impact investing firm Imprint Capital, which was gobbled up by Goldman Sachs in 2015.

“Now they can read about impact investing in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. They know what it is,” the 32-year-old San Francisco native says.

Indeed, in the past few years the idea of garnering both financial and social returns on investment has moved from the fringe to the mainstream — while also moving toward the mainstream of elite business school curricula.