As part of an ongoing webinar series exploring employment trends and best practices, Dr. Mrim Boutla of More Than Money Careers hosted a session on impact investing specifically. The audience was university faculty and staff, but the insights and advice were helpful for anyone considering pursuing a career in impact investing -- especially those with a liberal arts background who might not be aware of how their education and skills can translate.

Watch the webinar at More Than Money Careers »

"No matter the major, there will be career opportunities"

Dr. Boutla takes a few minutes to define impact investing -- "investments intended to create positive impact beyond financial return" -- before identifying two buckets of coursework and work experience that are consistent with what employers need in the field: 

• Business/law education
• Liberal arts/design education, including:
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Economics
  • Design/multimedia
  • STEM
  • Foreign languages

It's the latter group, she says, that may not be an obvious connection to impact investing for students coming out of those majors, and she details a few of the disciplines where they're applicable:

• Evaluation and monitoring
• Dealing with complexity
• Design thinking
• Languages
• High emotional intelligence (EQ)

Employers and focus areas

Digging into how to align a career path in impact investing not only with education but also with passion, Dr. Boutla first divides by instrument:

• Financial investments (microfinance, crowdfunding, growth capital)
• Leadership investments (social incubators, service programs, advisory services)

Then she further identifies three major "classes" of impact investing causes, citing JP Morgan and Global Impact Investing Network. These are where growth is really taking off within the industry, and they run the gamut of social and environmental programs:

• Assets for the poor (employment, access to services like education and energy)
• Basic welfare for people in need (access to water, food security, healthcare)
• Mitigate climate change (conservation, energy efficiency, pollution prevention, sustainability)

Says Dr. Boutla, "No matter what major students have in liberal arts -- energy, women's studies, conservation and environmental management -- they will have opportunities to influence and get hired by those impact investment funds aligned with their area of focus."

Bottom line advice: Get specific

A lot of students only know that they want to work in impact investing generally, rather than really diving in and exploring a highly specialized area of expertise. Dr. Boutla cautions that this is a mistake:

"It would be like speaking Latin because you know that Latin is at the core of French and Italian. You still need to learn French or Italian! ... At some point you have to go from the general to the specialized -- because it's a specializing field. And the more specialized and tailored you can be when you talk to each employer, the easier it will be to compete."

Watch the webinar at More Than Money Careers »