As I write this blog post, I realize that I just turned in the last paper of my graduate studies. It has been a wholesome and exciting experience, which I will forever be grateful for. The Sustainable Investment Research Project gave me an internship experience that was structured yet flexible. As I venture back into the workforce, I hope to use some of the lessons that I learnt while working for my client, as a team with the opportunity to learn from my professor, Caroline Flammer, as well as my classmates.
The first thing that I learnt is that learning is a life-long process. Although I had worked in Development Finance, I had never taken a deep dive into the subject of Gender Finance. As it is still a novel topic even for seasoned professionals, it made it exciting to be performing a landscape analysis and highlighting the knowledge and practical gaps in strengthening gender financing mechanisms. However, that was also the challenge; to decipher the principles that made our suggested case studies scalable and innovative.
The second lesson for me was dealing with feedback. Luckily, our team was willing to frontload our work at the beginning of the semester; however, as we dived deeper, we began to seek the frontier that would make our deliverable more novel. Unfortunately, this made it hard to finalize our report in a timely manner. As a result, we were receiving feedback comments up until the last few weeks, which expanded the scope of our work to be inclusive of what we had initially excluded in the beginning of the semester. This was great feedback from our client, a professional who has noted trends in the market and knows to elevate our work product and enlighten us.
This brings me to my third lesson which is team work makes the dream work. As cliché as those sounds, it was the utmost truth in my team. We all brought different experiences ranging from gender to finance and economics expertise. We were also humble and respectful in receiving and giving comments. And when we experienced a time crunch in taking in feedback to deliver the final report, this made all the difference. We leaned on each other’s energy levels, knowledge, strengths and skills.
Overall, I must say that this project has been a learning experience for me, and my team. In a safe space, but with as much realism as possible, I have pushed further the envelope of my knowledge of the subject matter, project management and client management. I am really happy to have taken this course, and witnessed my team and other groups tackle different aspects of sustainability. It was an honor to receive the wealth of knowledge and guidanceship offered by Prof Caroline. I am excited to about the relevance of this project in my future career as a professional in sustainable development. I am also excited to see how this cohort of young achievers would become the future face of development in the coming years.