Kellogg team captures a unanimous victory at the 2026 Turner MIINT Competition

Five Kellogg MBA students learned that the fastest way to understand an industry is to dive in, an experience that sparked new career ambitions.
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a group of three men and two women standing in front of a step and repeat holding a trophy
From left to right: Gibb, Paul, Richa, Kunal and Liusine.

The Turner MBA Impact Investing Network and Training (MIINT) Competition is the largest impact investing competition for graduate students, with teams from more than 35 MBA programs. This year, the Kellogg MBA team won the $50,000 Moelis Family Prize for Brisil Technologies Private Limited, an India-based startup working to make silica production greener and more sustainable. The venture converts rice husk ash into green silica for tires and other industrial applications.  

The team that included Liusine Khachumova ’26 MBA, Richa Jatia ’26 MBA and Two-Year MBA students Gibb Anella ’27, Kunal Vats ’27 and Paul Esslinger ’27 earned a unanimous win. Learn how their curiosity about the future of energy, mobility and agriculture inspired their award-winning solution. 

What drew you to get involved with the Turner MIINT competition? 

Richa: I’d been running an education nonprofit in India for years, mostly focusing on the impact side of business. I wanted to understand the capital side, and MIINT gave me a chance to sit on the other side of the table for a year. 

How did the team’s dynamic become your actual competitive advantage? 

Kunal: We deliberately didn’t assign roles. Each week, a different one of us led our meeting, and we all rotated through every part of the process: sourcing, outreach, diligence, modeling, etc. That built a real sense of accountability and ownership.  

What is the biggest misconception about impact investing you came in with, and what replaced it? 

Paul: Coming in, I assumed the best impact investments would have the most compelling stories. After reviewing 200+ companies, I think it’s almost the opposite. The companies where impact is most embedded in the model tend to get the least attention (e.g. industrials, agriculture and infrastructure). These stories can be harder to tell, and scaling can take longer, but the impact feels more durable.  

Through this experience you dug into a real company, real financials, real social impact — not a case study. What was one of the most challenging things to assess? 

Gibb: Demand was one of the most challenging aspects. You can model unit economics and stress-test a thesis all day, but what’s hard to know from the outside is whether customers will actually show up at the scale and the price needed to make the business work. As we dug into Brisil, this meant talking to tire manufacturers. Our advice to fellow entrepreneurs is to speak to three or four times as many customers as you think you need to.  

three men and two women sitting around a table with laptops, water bottles and notebooks.
Clockwise from left: Gibb, Kunal, Liusine, Paul, and Richa during a team meeting at the Global Hub.

Where did your MBA experience serve as a map, and where did you find yourself trusting your own instincts? 

Liusine: Professor Tasha Seitz asked us early on to explain what would have to happen for our impact thesis to fail five years out. Instead of trying to ”sell” the company, she encouraged us to be upfront about the risks. That not only made our pitch more credible, but it also taught us to think like better investors. Thanks so much for everything, Tasha. 

A unanimous decision from the judges is rare. What was going through your mind when they announced the winner? 

Kunal: None of us came into Kellogg as impact investors, and here was an experienced investment committee unanimously backing our recommendation for where to invest $50,000 over 35 other impressive teams’ recommendations.  

What’s a moment from MIINT you will still be telling people about five years from now? 

Paul: During one of the early calls with our founder, who had spent over a decade working mostly independently on the technology, we asked him about cost of goods sold and customer acquisition. At one point in the conversation, he said, “You’re the first people who’ve asked how I think about scaling impact, not just selling product,” and that really stuck with us.  

What feels different about how you approach impact investing now? 

Richa: I feel more comfortable saying ‘I don't know.’ Real diligence taught me that confidence isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about knowing which questions matter most, being comfortable sitting with uncertainty and trusting the process. 

How has this experience shaped your post-MBA career direction? 

Richa: I knew I wanted to spend my career in impact, but I hadn’t really explored impact investing. Turner MIINT introduced me to an entirely new part of this ecosystem, and I’m excited to continue exploring full-time opportunities in this sector. 

a brown-skinned woman dressed in business professional attire holding a mic
Richa presents during during the Turner MIINT Competition, a program that challenges students to put impact investing principles into practice.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about competing in Turner MIINT next year? 

Gibb: First, it’ll be slightly inefficient and slightly uncomfortable at times, and that’s ok. Second, talk to last year’s team in your first week; they’ll tell you in 45 minutes what would otherwise take you three months. Third, look at the companies that would get blank stares if you mentioned them at a small group dinner. Concrete impact tends to live in the industries nobody is writing about. If you’re all interested in impact investing, apply! You’ll learn more by doing than reading about it for a year. 

 

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The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Kellogg School of Management or Northwestern University.