As a second-year student, Cissy Chen (MBA 2019) worked with Jingsheng Huang, managing executive director of the Harvard Center Shanghai, to organize an impact investing conference in Shanghai. (photo courtesy Harvard Center Shanghai)

As a second-year student, Cissy Chen (MBA 2019) worked with Jingsheng Huang, managing executive director of the Harvard Center Shanghai, to organize an impact investing conference in Shanghai. (photo courtesy Harvard Center Shanghai)

It takes drive and conviction for an MBA student to organize a business conference, especially in another country. Cissy Chen (MBA 2019) displayed both when she reached out to Jingsheng Huang, managing executive director of the Harvard Center Shanghai, in November 2018 to enlist his support for an idea. Inspired by what she learned in the second-year MBA elective Investing in the 21st Century: Return, Risk, and Impact, Chen hoped to advance an impact investing ecosystem in China. The course was taught by Shawn Cole, the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration, and Senior Lecturer Vikram S. Gandhi. In just weeks, she and Huang worked with Harvard Business Publishing and the HBS Alumni Club of Shanghai to develop an impact investing conference in Shanghai. On December 19, 150 pioneers in social enterprise and impact investing, other practitioners, and academics in China gathered for engaging discussions about the topic.

“As a native of Shanghai who has been blessed with an HBS education, I feel a strong responsibility to do something in this sector,” says Chen. “Impact investing is still in the very early stages in China and lacks human capital, government support, and high-quality investees. There is a clear need to build a platform for Chinese investors.” Chen estimates that over the next two decades, $3.4 trillion of wealth in China will pass to a new generation of high-net-worth families, many of whom want to do well by doing good. “At the conference we saw many young social entrepreneurs who, instead of taking high-paying investment banking or consulting jobs, are pursuing their passion to solve problems,” she notes.

Before enrolling in the MBA Program, Chen worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Shanghai and Singapore. While there, she began to question her own societal impact, prompting her application to HBS. In her first year, Chen explored launching her own startup, but decided that she didn’t have the right technology skills to make it viable. It was in her second year that she discovered how her finance background could help her show others how to align portfolios with principles.

Building on the success of the Shanghai conference, Chen organized a social enterprise and impact investing panel at the April 2019 Harvard College China Forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During her last semester at HBS, she also worked on an independent project that reinvigorated her entrepreneurial drive, creating a business plan that serves as a framework for her interest in advancing impact investing in China, which includes educating others about the space. Now back at RBS in Singapore, where she is in Financial Institutions Macro Sales, Chen continues her work on this plan.

“If I hadn’t come to HBS and taken that course, I never would have thought about impact investing,” Chen explains. “I hope to pass my knowledge from HBS to the outside world and think that’s a powerful way to make a difference.”

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