Best in Impact Investing

MBA team wins international investment pitch competition

A team of five students from the Hildebrand MBA Program at Texas McCombs took first-place honors in the prestigious Turner MBA Impact Investing Network & Training (MIINT) competition earlier this month.

They bested 48 teams from graduate business schools around the world, advancing through the semifinal and final rounds held April 5 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “Impact investing” integrates social and environmental considerations into the investment process.

First-year MBA students Estefany Lira Galeana, Aldo Galli, Andrew Kress, Caroline Murray, and Andrew Poss won the competition’s Moelis Family Foundation Prize after pitching to invest $50,000 in a California-based company developing technologies to diagnose battery health.

The win puts McCombs in the company of only three other schools—Wharton, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Yale School of Management—to take top honors twice. In 2021, McCombs became the first business school at a public university to win the competition.

Meeta Kothare, the team’s mentor and managing director for the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute at Texas McCombs, described the team as “sharp, curious, and full of heart.”

“They never lost their commitment to impact, or their sense of humor, in the long months it took just to find the right company and then the busy weeks of learning about it and pitching it at the competition,” she said. “This win celebrates not just their brilliance, but their hustle and incredible teamwork.”

The prize money will be invested in the team’s partner company, ReJoule. With millions of second-life batteries for electric vehicles expected to come on the market during the next few years, the McCombs team showed judges the potential deep impact of ReJoule’s new technology, which provides faster, safer, and more accurate assessments of battery life.

In their presentation to the judges, team members emphasized that managing the health of EV batteries will be critical for smarter, more sustainable use of batteries amid climate urgency, tariffs, and global supply chain uncertainty.

The annual Turner MIINT competition launches each October, and over seven months students gain real-world experience sourcing, researching, and presenting early-stage impact venture capital deals.

“We are immensely proud of these students for bringing home the MIINT competition victory,” said Texas McCombs Dean Lillian Mills. “They represent our collective effort at McCombs to prepare leaders who are as conscientious as they are bold.”

Story by Sally Parker