PIC 2021: A Year in Review - letter from the Founders
As 2021 comes to a close and 2022 begins, we are excited to announce Princeton Impact Capital was able to make great inroads on our objectives during our first semester as a club.
When the four of us decided to create a new sustainable finance club in Spring 2021, we hoped that it would create a medium in which students on campus could come together to learn finance fundamentals with an ESG angle, discuss sustainable investment topics, and hear from leaders in the industry.
We found success with our educational model during this past fall - club meetings that covered the basic finance fundamentals ranging from accounting to valuation to LBO modeling. Most importantly, we used practical examples whether it was through a case study or a live model built to reinforce concepts. Slides and recordings of these lessons were made available online for our members to review.
During weekly club meetings, members provided slides on the state of the current market movements and ESG-related deals that they found interesting. These market updates covered things from EVs to energy companies to trending topics like cryptocurrencies. Our club also held debate-style meetings, where we would discuss the sustainable practices of companies like Teladoc and share opinions on various micro and macro issues affecting ESG markets today.
One thing we were most excited about going in was our speaker series. We heard from six different executives at four different companies throughout the semester. The topics would range from Barclays’ philosophies on ESG ratings based on consumer adoption in the EU, Phenix Capital’s various impact investing projects, and Nike’s sustainable sourcing protocols. We made these speaker series sessions open to the broader Princeton community, and we will continue to do so when we invite new speakers for the spring semester, in line with our values of openness and inclusiveness. In the spring, we are working to bring in speakers from backgrounds beyond corporate, such as those within government agencies, academic institutions, and non-profits to give us a more holistic overview of the sustainable investing landscape.
But the thing we are most proud of this semester has to be the 18 new members we welcomed into the club. They came from varying class years and from wide-ranging majors (from MOL to CEE to ORF) and have different career goals (some want to go directly into corporate ESG investing, while others are considering working in academia, and still others hope to help build sustainable infrastructure). Princeton students are very busy, but these new members really showed their dedication to PIC; collectively they reached 92% attendance at meetings during the semester. They have also shown incredible eagerness to engage in many of the club-related projects, beyond just the weekly meetings, that allowed us to make our ESG mission reach a broader audience. Members published 7 articles on the PIC Insights Blog and began to establish relationships with new club partners. Moving forward, our phenomenal and diverse membership will continue to drive our objectives in supporting our mission: providing a medium for Princeton students to immerse themselves in the ESG investing space through maintaining an inclusive mindset that pertains to the wider Princeton community.
Andy He, Antoni (Antek) Hasiura, Jason Gu, Justin Ong
Founders of Princeton Impact Capital
