Student-Led NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) Invests in Company That Offers Systemic Solutions to Improving Maternal and Neonatal Health in Low-resource Settings
Fund makes investment in Maternova
The student-led NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) has completed its latest investment with an investment in Maternova, a company that offers systemic solutions to improving maternal and neonatal health in low-resource settings by accelerating the commercialization of a fundamental set of medical devices needed to save maternal and newborn lives.
Maternova is NIIF’s fifth investment.
Maternova researches, reviews and sells innovative, proven obstetric and newborn technologies to private hospitals, governments, Ministries of Health, NGOs and healthcare professionals around the world. Since being founded, Maternova has helped more than 2.5 million women and infants in more than 100 countries.
NIIF is the first-of-its-kind student-operated impact investment fund built on a unique cross-school collaboration among NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Stern School of Business, NYU Abu Dhabi and the NYU School of Law, overseen by Professor Andrea Armeni of NYU Wagner and supported NYU Stern’s Experiential Learning team. NIIF acts as a springboard for preparing emerging professionals for competitive impact investing roles globally while providing much needed investment capital to early stage impact enterprises.
NIIF’s Investment Committee is composed of three Stern and Wagner alumni practitioners: Graham MacMillan of the Visa Foundation, Monique Aiken of The Investment Integration Project, and Maria D. Toler of SteelSky Ventures. The due diligence for NIIF’s final investment prospects was supported pro bono by Orrick's global Impact Finance & Investment practice.
Now in its sixth year, NIIF has supported more than 175 students and made $140,000 in investments in five companies, including Maternova:
- Sapient Industries, an environmental impact company
- SmartGurlz, a STEM business teaching young girls to code
- KIGT, a company that brings electric vehicle charging stations to underserved communities
- EdVisorly, a community college-to-university platform
NIIF continues next academic year with a diverse group of about 40 graduate and undergraduate student participants, competitively selected from a large pool of applicants.
About the NYU Impact Investment Fund
Developed as a joint venture between the faculty advisors and students of New York University's Stern, Wagner, and Law schools, NIIF leverages the diverse expertise of business, public service, and law faculty to support student investors targeting social enterprises in the sectors of financial inclusion, environment, healthcare, aging, education, and food systems. The experiential course includes processes to train the students on impact investing, provides practitioner guest lecturers, and creates an interdisciplinary learning laboratory. NIIF is pursuing additional donations and grants to enable this experiential platform to continue well into the future. Learn more on the NIIF website.
About NYU Stern School of Business
New York University Stern School of Business, located in the heart of Greenwich Village and deeply connected with the City for which it is named, is one of the nation’s premier management education schools and research centers. NYU Stern offers a broad portfolio of transformational programs at the graduate, undergraduate and executive levels, all of them enriched by the dynamism and deep resources of one of the world’s business capitals. NYU Stern is a welcoming community that inspires its members to embrace and lead change in a rapidly transforming world. Visit www.stern.nyu.edu.
About NYU Wagner
Since 1938, NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service has been educating and preparing the world's future public service leaders to translate ideas into actions that have an effective and lasting impact on the public good. Our faculty’s research changes the way people frame, understand, and act on important public issues. We provide our students with critical skills, access to all that New York City has to offer, and a deep understanding of the context surrounding public service challenges—which they use to improve cities and communities across the globe. Ranked seventh nationally among all schools of public affairs, we offer a Master of Public Administration in Public & Nonprofit Management & Policy, Master of Public Administration in Health Policy & Management, Master of Urban Planning, Master of Health Administration, Master of Science in Public Policy, Executive Master of Public Administration, and PhD in Public Administration. Learn more at NYU Wagner.