Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund
As the first and only student-led investment fund of its scale ($1M+) within a leading business school focused on both social and financial returns, the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund (HSRIF) seeks to achieve lofty goals while offering unique student opportunities and challenges.
Reaching beyond a student training ground, HSRIF seeks to contribute to the field of social investing by defining and exploring new ideas around unlocking hidden value based on companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. As such, Fund Principals believe that the less conventional their thinking, the more innovative their approach, the less correlation with the activity of other established SRI funds, the greater the potential to achieve this goal.
HSRIF Principals are MBA and MFE students interested in finance and corporate responsibility. Through the Fund they have the opportunity to test the investment and corporate responsibility principles they’ve learned in the classroom, and to experience the complexities, challenges, and rewards of the investing world. The biggest challenge? Unlike other mainstream funds, HSRIF experiences about 50% turnover each year as students graduate. This has implications for knowledge management and in particular, investment philosophy as the Fund welcomes a fresh crop of students and perspectives.
At a high level the investment philosophy guiding the Fund and its Principles is to achieve a balance between financial and social/environmental performance:
- Financial: Valuation metrics, firm size and growth, size of market, competitive position, strength of management, recent performance, etc.
- Social/Environmental: customer benefits from using the product/service, sustainability principles, supply chain practices, employee treatment, etc.
The fund was launched with generous gifts from Haas alumni Al Johnson, BS 1962 and MBA 1969, and his wife, Marguerite; Charlie Michaels, BS 1978, and his wife, Doris; and Larry Johnson, BS 1972, and his wife, Victoria. We are tremendously grateful for their leadership and continued support.
Find out more about participating in HSRIF.
Annual Reports
The HSRIF Annual Report highlights information about the evolving investment approach, performance, holdings and portfolio management.
Past News Articles
MBA '11
Investment Consultant at Cambridge Associates
"An important aspect of this fund is the freedom we have to explore different approaches to corporate social responsibility. We have made great strides toward exploring how social performance translates - or sometimes doesn't translate - into financial performance."
