Learning to Invest With Purpose

From hosting a hackathon workshop at Dana Hall’s She Sails 2023 event to learning how to invest with purpose as an intern at Nia Impact Capital, a woman-owned impact investing firm, alumna Ayelen Herrera '24) is using her computational and analytical skills to change the face of male-dominated fields. As a freshman at Northwestern University, she was not afraid to try new things, so when she heard about Nia’s Changing the Face of Finance Program, she submitted her application and was excited to receive the good news—she was chosen as one of the participants for the summer of 2025 cohort. Nia interns learn the fundamentals of impact investing by engaging in hands-on portfolio and company research, while also receiving mentorship from the Nia team. The program gave Ayelen exposure to the firm’s analysts, portfolio management team, and founder Kristin Hull. Ayelen shared with me the many exciting projects that she completed during the summer at Nia Impact Capital, so I asked her to share them with you. Here are Ayelen’s highlights in her own words:

When I heard about the Nia Impact Capital internship, I was immediately captivated. Although I am not studying finance at Northwestern, being knowledgeable in a variety of areas has always been of interest and important to me. Especially in the world we live in today, it’s important to know about how money circulates. Nia Impact Capital provided me with a great opportunity to explore another field of interest, and it is a female-led investment firm with one of its major initiatives being increased female presence in company leadership roles. This internship also felt like another compelling challenge to step into a male-dominated field. 

During the internship, I gained valuable knowledge about company finances and how much Nia is committed to their six solution themes. I was surrounded by a group of mostly female interns and the Nia team, which was inspiring. It felt good to be surrounded by a mostly female team again like I was at Dana Hall. Seeing their exceptional knowledge in what they do and how they carried themselves with such confidence, leadership, and care moved me. I learned so much from the team and my fellow interns, from how to read a company 10-K form to life advice. During my time at Nia, we worked a lot with spreadsheets and had many engaging conversations with fellow interns, including how the use of AI can be implemented into the projects we worked on to increase efficiency. This further showed me how engineering really is involved everywhere, and how having an engineering focused brain can aid in any chosen field.

I was able to implement my problem solving skills that I first began learning at Dana Hall and am honing at Northwestern to think about ways we could optimize the projects we worked on.

In addition, during the internship, I was forced to exercise a different part of my brain that dealt with learning the investment management language and vocabulary, which is also important.

One of our final projects, a stock pitch where we had to research a potential company Nia was looking to invest in and then present it to the Nia portfolio team, was especially challenging due to the amount of independence and new terms that I had to learn in order to complete the valuation presentation. Despite the difficulty of the challenge, I faced it with open arms and was able to gain the most insight from this particular project.

I believe having a wide exposure to different fields and implementing all the knowledge and skills from the different areas will allow me to excel in engineering or any path I take, just like Northwestern’s philosophy of whole-brain engineering, which is what initially attracted me to the program.

In looking towards the future, I now know how to make wise investment decisions. I know where to look and what the words mean when I am looking at a company’s finances. I am excited to continue exploring new fields to not only expand my knowledge but also to become a better engineer and world citizen, while inspiring other women to break into male-dominated fields. 

After hearing Ayelen’s story, I truly believe she is fulfilling Dana Hall’s mission. She is well prepared for the challenges and choices she is facing as a woman and citizen of the world. As her former computer science and engineering teacher, I’m also proud of her accomplishments and excited to see the incredible things she will achieve after graduating with a double major in biomedical engineering and neuroscience from Northwestern University.

Photo: As a Dana Hall junior, Ayelen Herrera led a session during a Hackathon at She Sails 2023.