Impact and Sustainable Ventures: Peru and Chile 2024
Course description
Sustainable development and sustainability as drivers for venture impact and scale are growing exponentially across Latin America. In this course, we will learn from experts in sustainable ventures and development and focus in on impact strategy and reporting for sustainable and impactful ventures. To gain our on-the-ground experience and exposure, this course will span Peru and Chile - two Latin American countries dedicating financial and infrastructure resources towards sustainability and community economic development - with special attention paid to each country’s history, culture, community, and ecosystems.Those best suited for this class include students interested in sustainability and social impact, sustainable and impact finance, Latin American markets and commerce, and those hoping to bring sustainability, social impact, and impact measurement learning into their professional lives.
The class involves an intensive group project on impact/sustainability strategy and reporting. Each student team focuses on one selected venture in one of the two countries as the focus of this project. Students will be expected to engage in and contribute strongly to classwork and the group project.
Itinerary
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Syllabus
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Faculty and advisor bios
Faculty bio
Megan Kashner is a Lecturer in Kellogg's Social Impact Program. In her leadership of Kellogg's Social Impact offerings, Kashner focuses on the areas of impact investing, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, nonprofit management, policy, global development, public-private partnerships, values and ethics. Kashner and the Social Impact team support Kellogg faculty, students and alumni as they lead the way in blending economic, social and environmental factors into management organizations and markets to deliver lasting benefits for society. Kashner leads up the global Impact & Sustainable Finance Faculty Consortium, the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, the Moskowitz Prize, and more collaborative work at the intersection of markets and impact.
Kashner came to Kellogg from an extensive career in the impact sector, most recently as the Founder of Benevolent, a philanthropic platform that invites donors to step in and fill gaps in the safety net for low-income families. Kashner is a self-proclaimed "ticked-off social worker" with more than 20 years of strategic management, community partnership building and organizational planning experience across nonprofits, philanthropy, volunteerism and corporate social engagement.
Prior to founding Benevolent, Kashner served as an Executive Director at the Taproot Foundation and in executive and innovation roles in nonprofits and companies across the impact sector. Kashner has been featured at the White House, at national conferences on philanthropy and entrepreneurship, on CNN Headline News, FastCompany, Mashable, Working Mother, MSNBC, The New Yorker, Financial Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and more.
Kashner is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of Illinois and holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University, an MSW from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Kellogg.