I am a MIA/MBA dual degree at Columbia’s School of Internal and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Columbia Business School. Prior to school, I worked in business strategy for Banco Votorantim Securities, an international subsidiary of the Brazilian conglomerate group. It was during my time there that I decided to use my financial and strategy skills to strengthen the sustainability movement. With this goal in mind, I joined Columbia in the fall of 2015.
As a SIPA student, I focused on renewable energy and resource management, and spent the summer of 2016 with the clean energy finance team at the Connecticut Green Bank. This experience allowed me to gather real renewable energy modeling experience, while also interacting with the diverse players on the sector and understanding better how the industry is structured.
While at Columbia Business School, I was focusing on the business side of things and the Sustainable Investing Fellowship was the perfect opportunity to get exposure to how global investment banks such as Morgan Stanley approach sustainable investing. During my fellowship, I worked with Morgan Stanley’s Sustainability Research team to understand how to incorporate ESG metrics into traditional equity research. My focus was on understanding which ESG issues are most important in Latin America and how investors can integrate those into valuation models.
The Sustainable Investing Fellowship was very valuable not only from the finance skills perspective, but also because I was able to better understand what investors are looking for when incorporating ESG into their investment strategies. The fellowship also exposed me to senior Morgan Stanley executives, which gave me further insight into how the firm is improving its sustainability efforts.