Day in the Life of a Mosaic Fellow

Featuring Stella Liu, Fellow - Arborview Capital

Thankfully, there was no “typical” day for me. My personal goal going into the Mosaic Fellowship program was to maximize my understanding of the impact investing role. I have heard of VC internships solely focusing on thesis development, and while that is useful to understand new spaces, it’s only 1 critical aspect of the job. I was hoping to work on a breadth of projects in financial diligence, impact measurement, fund operations, and sourcing so I could assess my personal and professional fit with the work.

 Through the matching process, I met with a few funds and was able to find a great match with Arborview Capital, a growth equity fund focused on environmental sustainability impact. My previous experiences mapped well with their impact themes, and we spoke about a variety of projects I could work on over the summer. When the summer started, my manager was ready with projects scoped out from impact measurement to financial diligence. I felt very integrated with the team and was able to participate in all the calls happening in the week with management teams and new startup founders. I felt pushed out of my comfort zone working on my projects, but felt that the Mosaic Programming on financial modeling, impact measurement, and more provided the pointers I needed to feel confident in my work. The onboarding document had a list of resources that I reviewed before my internship including courses in financial modeling and investment thesis development.

The day-to-day then varied between supporting a live deal, identifying promising companies to reach out to, digging into impact metrics for the portfolio companies, and listening to startup founder pitches. Every meeting was a learning opportunity; the Partner would call us immediately after a startup presentation to share his thoughts and listen to ours. My manager also set aside open-ended “learning hours” with me to teach me the ropes on various aspects of investing from conducting a proper board meeting to the steps involved in final legal diligence. The experience truly felt like an apprenticeship; I am very grateful for the willingness from the rest of the team to meet with me individually, share their career journeys, and answer any questions I had.

While the internship was remote, there were many opportunities to engage in person and feel like a part of a larger community. I was able to fly to the East Coast to work in the office with my manager for a week. I also enjoyed participating in ICM Happy Hours and meeting other impact investing funds and fellows in person. There were regular touchpoints for the fellows to meet each other; we would meet for an hour every Friday. This was open-ended time to share questions and compare notes on our experiences. Through this, I was able to learn about how other funds in the Impact Capital Managers network operated and meet other MBA students interested in impact investing. There was a strong contingent of fellows based in the Bay area and we met up for dinners to get to know each other.

I started the Mosaic Fellowship hoping to learn the ropes of impact investing; I finished the experience with so much more. The Mosaic programming exposed me to the different paths in impact investing, the cohort of fellows provided community, and my host fund experience gave me confidence that impact investing would be a good career pivot for me. I would highly recommend this experience to MBA students interested in impact investing and am happy to answer any questions.