Kiara Feliz

Yale School of Management

“I have a penchant for cogent debates, adroit problem-solving, and using pretentious words.”

Hometown: Manchester, New Hampshire

Fun Fact About Yourself: As a preschooler, I used to climb the walls of my home to escape whenever I was in trouble, demonstrating a propensity for creative problem-solving from a young age. By flattening myself against the ceiling, I was able to stay safely out of reach of my irate but petite mother.

Undergraduate School and Major: University of Pennsylvania, Health & Societies

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: I most recently held a dual-hatted role at FHI 360, a non-profit human development organization driving local solutions in 70+ countries. I was an Innovation Associate on their strategy team and an Associate on their impact investing team, FHI Ventures.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: In the Peace Corps, I was tasked with the development of an aqueduct that had been stalled for a decade. If revived, I would bring potable water access to more than 20,000 Costa Ricans. At an estimated cost of $8M to complete, community leaders had barely accrued $500K. It took nearly the entirety of my service to secure funding – from painstakingly organizing finances to generating inter-community buy-in to facilitating negotiations with government officials – but after years of hard work, the project finally started moving forward and is due to be completed in 2020!

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? I’ve spent the majority of my career living and traveling abroad in cultures foreign to me. It has afforded me the privilege of connecting with people from diverse backgrounds and interests, but nowhere have I found a group more committed to solving the world’s most pressing issues than at Yale. From the moment I first set foot on campus, when a fellow SOMer offered me cricket chips – an environmentally sustainable protein alternative to the meat industry – to every encounter I’ve had since then, each SOMer has proven to have a genuine commitment to impacting the world for the better.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? It was ultimately Yale’s investment per student that cemented my decision to attend SOM. In weighing my decision, I made sure to communicate my career interests to students, alumni, and faculty at each of my admitted schools. When comparing the level of response from each school, I realized Yale’s ROI far outperformed that of its peers. The conversations I had with Yale students, alumni, and staff yielded more follow-up touchpoints, external connections, and insights than any other school. Through that process, I realized that only at Yale would I be able to make the most of my MBA.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? When it comes to clubs, you will most likely find me at Yale’s Social Impact Lab learning from industry leaders how sustainability is being measured across fields. Academically, however, I’m most excited about Yale’s integrated curriculum and raw case method. I tend to adhere to the school of thought that the best way to learn something is through experience. Yale’s innovative curriculum takes this to heart by providing various stakeholder perspectives and raw data that may or may not be relevant to solving the issue at hand. This forces students to discern what to prioritize and thereby simulating the next best thing to a real, on-the-job experience.

The Yale School of Management is regarded as a purpose-driven program. What is your mission? How will your MBA at Yale help you fulfill that mission? At present, a financing gap exists among impact funds. All too often, new, yet promising, impact investing funds are passed over by HNWIs seeking VC/PE rates of return and by traditional investors favoring senior, more established funds, which leaves early-stage funds struggling to scale. As I seek to address this financing disparity, I plan to call on lessons I’ve learned working in impact investing and insights gleaned at Yale.

I plan to dedicate my first year at Yale to exploring the gold standard in impact investing inside and outside of the classroom through resources such as IIC and Yale’s Impact Investing Conference while my second year at Yale will focus on strengthening my ability to assess and quantify returns via more traditional VC/PE-focused electives – skills that are instrumental to discerning and advancing financially viable impact investing funds.

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process? It wasn’t one question that was asked of me per se, but rather what the admissions process required that I do: reflect on my life, map the evolution of my values and drivers, and condense nearly three decades to 500 words or less (which is made exponentially more difficult when you consider half my life was in SAP programming).

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? As someone without a traditional finance background working in impact investing, I wanted to take my career to the next level. I sought advice from mentors who were invested in my future, friends with MBAs, and industry leaders without business degrees. I realized that for me, an MBA was the best opportunity to advance my career as a leader in socially responsible investing.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? A lady never tells.

How did you determine your fit at various schools? I initially conducted all of my research online, leveraging resources like school employment reports, Poets & Quants, mbaMission’s free Business Insider’s Guides, etc. Once I had narrowed down the pool to the ones I was interested in, I began attending each school’s sponsored events and speaking with admission representatives, but it was in connecting with current students, recent alumni, and particularly senior alumni that I was able to determine the right long-term fit.

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? I don’t believe in a single defining moment in our lives, but rather a series of moments that have the potential to have a lasting impact on our life trajectories. That being said, one of the more powerful moments in my life was when I was seven and my family was undergoing a difficult time financially. I attended a parochial school at the time and volunteered after school at the adjoining church, which soon became a second home to my sisters and me. One of the priests, Father Theophane, often times went above and beyond his Christian duty to gift us small tokens of appreciation, each gift carefully calculated to acknowledge that despite our circumstances, we deserved more. At one school book fair, I remember Father Theophane handing me a crumpled dollar bill and whispering, “Go invest in your future.” I later realized that the dollar bill represented potential – a potential that was worth investing in and the potential to make a difference in my life.

All of my choices in life have centered on passing on the dignity that was conferred on me as a child to others, to empower others to reach their potential despite life’s hurdles. I credit this as the driving force behind my desire for an MBA, to scale the number of crumpled dollars I’m effectively able to pass on.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? I see myself managing an investment fund I believe in and helping the next generation of female investors to have the same opportunities that I did.