While we have witnessed an explosion in the number and variety of impact investing courses at American universities in the past decade, for many students, the path to a role in impact investing still seems opaque.
Our new survey of Impact Capital Managers’ Mosaic Fellows offers one of the first systematic, qualitative looks at how students actually break into impact investing — and what universities, fellowship programs and job seekers can do to make those pathways more transparent and equitable.
In an earlier blog we tracked the impact investing labor market by analyzing the professional resumes of 350,000 MBA graduates, exploring the labor market experiences of those who eventually landed jobs in the impact investing sector.
To complement this effort and obtain more qualitative information, we partnered with Impact Capital Managers, a non-profit industry association of primarily US-based impact investors. ICM runs a summer “Mosaic Fellowship” designed to provide impact investing experience for US-based graduate students in ICM member funds. To date, 115 impact-focused graduate students have won this competitive fellowship and gained a range of experience partnering with impact funds across the country.
Our team from Harvard Business School’s Project on Impact Investments conducted a systematic survey of Mosaic Fellows to understand the landscape of pathways into impact investing. We reached out to all 115 fellows and received 20 comprehensive survey responses.
We asked fellows about their education, professional background, application preparation and transition to full-time work, and we invited their reflections on the program for host funds and future fellows.
Student insights:
- Educational background: All 20 comprehensive responses were submitted by MBA students, five of which were joint degree candidates. Most had studied finance and completed the fellowship between 2024 and 2025. Perhaps surprisingly, only five fellows reported past coursework in sustainability; a full 75% reported past coursework in finance.
- Professional background: Mosaic Fellows often had a background in consulting or finance, especially investment banking or VC/PE. Government and NGO backgrounds among fellows were less common, though roughly a fifth of respondents had worked at a social enterprise in the past.
- Preparation: Most fellows noted that they did have some sell-side or operational experience, but generally wished they had had more prior training on buy-side financial skills, from financial modelling to cap table management. Two books cited by multiple fellows as helpful in their preparation were “Doing Good Better” by William MacAskill and “Venture Deals” by Brad Feld. Lastly, a number of fellows attributed part of their success to the Turner MIINT program and the Toigo Fellowship.
- Experience and impact: The Mosaic fellowship provided clarity for respondents. For some, it confirmed their interest in impact investing, and for others it steered them toward other fields. Fellows reported that the aspects of the fellowship that most contributed to their professional growth were an expanded network in the impact investing sector and the development of new investment skills that will transfer to a full time impact investing role.
- Reflections and outcomes: About 45% of the fellows that responded to the survey reported that the program helped them secure a full-time impact investing role; about 15% did not seek an impact investing role. Fellows’ experience with recruitment success varies year by year and is largely dependent on market factors and fund cycles.
According to ICM’s internal data, 70% of all Mosaic Fellowship alumni go on to work in the impact investing sector — 41% at ICM funds and 29% at other impact investors as of 2024. In the long run, 75% of fellows still seek to work in impact finance, compared to just 6.7% in traditional finance. It’s worth noting that there may be a sample composition bias, with those more interested in impact investing more likely to respond to the survey.
Advice for early-career job seekers
Mosaic fellows offered the following advice for both future Mosaic fellows and those seeking jobs in impact investing broadly.
- Get specific. Impact investing is not one market; it spans market-rate funds, concessionary capital, quasi-nonprofits and everything in between. Fellows emphasized the importance of narrowing by thesis, asset class, stage and return expectations early. A generalist approach often “boils the ocean” and slows recruiting.
- Treat networking as the job — especially peer networking. The single most valuable outcome of Mosaic was access to people. Fellows repeatedly noted that relationships — with impact investors, past Mosaic fellows and peers in the cohort — were more important than any single role or project. Coffee chats, alumni outreach and staying in touch compound over time, even if they don’t lead to an immediate offer.
- Use the experience to build real investing skills, not just to signal interest. What translated into full-time roles were concrete skills like financial modeling, diligence, deal exposure and impact measurement. Fellows advised joining as many investment meetings as possible and pushing for deal-related work to develop marketable investment skills.
Shawn Cole is a professor of business administration and Jonah Zahnd is a research manager at Harvard Business School’s Project on Impact Investments.
Guest posts on ImpactAlpha represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ImpactAlpha.
