On April 15, 2016, finalists of the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge presented their proposals to a panel of judges at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. USC Marshall Students provided solutions to Angola’s food problems, outshining the competition to take away the first prize worth $10,000.
Team Terra Limpa in Hong Kong
To qualify, a team of graduate students submitted a two-page prospectus in Feb 2016 with an innovative financial strategy addressing a sustainability challenge meeting requirements of institutional investors by following a set of guidelines. Ten finalist teams were selected in March. In April, finalists presented their proposals to a panel of experienced investors and officers who currently manage pension funds, foundations, and institutional assets who reviewed and judged their pitches. “The caliber of finalists was among the best in the three years that the institute has been partnering with Kellogg on this,” said Audrey Choi, CEO of Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing. “We look forward to seeing a number of breakthrough projects coming to fruition in coming years, as a direct result of the challenge.”
Red Ribbon Fund (Darden School, University of Virginia) were runner-ups winning $5,000 in awards. They proposed a pay for performance instrument to support treatment adherence by HIV/AIDS affected people in the US.
About the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge
In 2011, Kellogg launched the International Impact Investing Challenge. Three years later, Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing partnered with Kellogg to launch the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge. The challenge focuses on creating investment strategies for positive environment or social impact while ensuring competitive financial returns. A pitch competition for graduate students, the challenge harnesses student creativity to create positive impact in a world of enduring resource scarcity and continued population growth. In 2014, the competition was held in New York, followed by London next year before moving to Hong Kong in this year’s edition.
Pitches might focus on areas like water, energy, food, social mobility, climate change, education or healthcare, among others. Contestants are encouraged to apply the entire spectrum of investment tools, styles and asset classes.
About Terra Limpa
The students of Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California developed an idea for the challenge with a simple motive of “increasing private investment in agriculture in Angola to revitalize land productivity, eliminate landmines and create a new class of smallholder farmers”. They named their pitch idea Terra Limpa. Headed by Ryan Alam, Suzana Amoes and Megan Strawther, their student team caught the panel’s attention with the problems the farmers financially and pitched their incentive of securing their plantations with technical aid to grow crops that would be sold to institutional buyers in urban markets. Terra Limpa competed against graduate students from 64 schools across 21 countries.
“Their idea was amazing and their due diligence and presentation were applauded. They simply shined above the competition. I could not be more proud of our students and our school.” said Adlai Wertman, professor of clinical entrepreneurship and director and founder of the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab at USC Marshall. “When people think about the problem of land mines and remnants of war, they think in terms of it needing a purely humanitarian solution,” Alam said. “This shines light on Angola and provides an opportunity to explore solutions that are beyond development aid and grant dollars”.
The students also spoke about their experience and the reasons behind the incentive. “Angola currently imports 80 percent of its food. Even though the country is rich in resources and the land is ideal for farming, the land cannot be used as it is covered in 10 to 20 million landmines as a result of its 27-year civil war,” said Strawther. Amoes himself is a native from Angola was well aware of the food crisis taking a toll on his hometown financially as well. “The time to restore Angola’s agricultural legacy is now, through investments with transformative impact on the livelihoods of people,” he said.