Impact Capital Managers, a non-profit network of private capital fund managers dedicated to impact investing, has announced its inaugural list of eight winners of its Mosaic Fellowship.
The fellowship program places first-year graduate students with member managers to "learn the ropes" of private equity or venture capital investing as summer associates.
Marieke Spence, executive director, said in an interview the fellowship program is a natural extension of ICM's mission to help "encourage or cultivate a diverse and skilled pipeline of talent" and its mandate to increase "diverse and skilled talent in the impact investing field."
When the application process for the program was launched Dec. 9, Ms. Spence said the network's managers thought they would end up naming six fellows, but the quality of the candidate pool and the number of fund managers that wanted to participate were greater than anticipated.
Annie Olszewski, director of programs at ICM, said in an interview they were "blown away" by the applicants.
While the fellows will work on specific projects for the individual programs, ICM will be involved throughout in providing opportunities for the cohort virtually through workshops and other learning opportunities, Ms. Spence said.
At the end of the summer, the fellows will share with ICM all the projects they worked on, and the organization will work on building on this inaugural fellowship.
"We want to more formalize the relationship with the graduate schools and really expand the reach of who's hearing about the program," Ms. Olszewski said.
The 2020 fellows will work with fund managers such as Achieve Partners, Arborview Capital, New Markets Venture Partners and SJF Ventures. The fellows are MBA candidates from graduate schools including the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; and the Yale School of Management.
Impact Capital Managers' membership consists of 47 funds representing more than $11 billion in impact-focused assets under management.
