Quyen Tran leverages real-world experience to teach how capital can yield change
Quyen Tran, professor of the practice in impact investing at The Fletcher School, has been teaching impact investing for five years, and ever since, her students have earned top recognitions in impact and sustainable finance competitions every year.
A relatively novel sector in the broader world of finance, impact investing is meant to generate societal and environmental improvements alongside financial returns. For Tran and her students, understanding these investment strategies and their underlying impact allows for imaginative approaches to policy, finance, and the transformational potential of investing.
“Financial markets are only as healthy as the ecosystems they operate in,” Tran said. “Social, environmental, and economic ecosystems are interdependent.”
As a managing director at Cambridge Associates, Tran serves as the firm’s head of sustainable and impact investing integration. She leverages insight from her work within Fletcher’s interdisciplinary approach to international affairs to expose students to real-world applications of impact investing, the effectiveness of regulation, and importance of investment policy.
The Human Impact of Social Enterprise
Tran’s journey into impact investing began from a more personal place. Her parents were refugees of the Vietnam War. When Saigon fell, her parents escaped to the sea, eventually landing in the Philippines.
Growing up across many places, Tran became deeply aware of her family’s needs from housing to healthcare, and food, setting the compass for how she views the world and its scarce resources.
“I was always acutely aware of how my family was fortunate to have access to basic needs, including shelter, education, and healthcare, which were possible thanks to innovative social enterprises and impactful business models,” Tran said.
Professor Tran’s family came to the United States when the Vietnam War ended, living temporarily at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Institutions like the Red Cross, Goodwill, community foundations, churches, and temples were critical to the survival of her family and others. Having seen directly how her family’s survival relied on collaboration between communities and social enterprises, Tran’s early adulthood, schooling, and career had her splitting her time between volunteering and finance. As impact investing emerged as a field, she discovered that she could meld her various aspirations into one career.
“Each time we moved homes, enrolled in a new school, and navigated new jobs, I knew there were so many things that could have gone wrong, but it went okay,” Tran said. “Then you feel like you want to give back. That's why I teach my students.”
“And you can't just go on heartstrings,” she added. “I teach them how to deepen their set of skills, and they have been winning investment competitions every year, consecutively, for five years.”
Tran’s own story continues to fuel her passion in the field and leaves an imprint on her students entering it.
“A career is a big investment in your time and mind,” Tran said. “It is possible to combine work and purpose in the field of finance, and that story can help connect with students who are inspired by their own journey and seek guidance on their career.”
Global Business Classes Rooted in Experience
Global business courses at Fletcher are rooted in hard skills and taught by practitioners who expose students to real-world scenarios. Students are eager to make time for Tran’s impact investing course because of her expertise. They also succeed in it because of how she harnesses her understanding of the field.
Earlier in her career at Cambridge Associates, Tran advised endowments and foundations on their investment strategy and headed the global training program for investment associates. Teaching is a natural fit for her, and she appreciates how Fletcher's interdisciplinary curriculum mirrors business and finance in the real world.
“Students would not have won these competitions if it were not for combining their knowledge from other classes at Fletcher and from my exceptional co-professor, Leticia Emme,” she said.
As students study cases in Professor Tran’s course, they encounter how investment decisions and impact results can reinforce fundamental business models, and they learn how to recognize mistakes in the investment industry that compromise the credibility of impact strategies. Students frequently put their skills to the test during prestigious case competitions during the year. This year, teams of Tran’s students participated in the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge and the Turner MIINT competition. In both cases, teams were asked to pitch investment plans that will have an outcome of positive change and generate a required level of investment returns. The Fletcher team in this year’s Kellogg-Morgan Stanley competition was named one of the 12 finalists out of 168 teams from 107 schools.
“It’s exciting because this whole industry—sustainable and impact investing—is still quite new compared to traditional investing, which has been around for decades,” Tran explained. “Students are drawn to solutions. They want to see how they can apply these new tools to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
Read more about Fletcher’s Master of International Business degree program and impact investing at Fletcher.