Impact and Sustainable Ventures: Peru and Colombia 2025

Course description

Sustainable development and sustainability as drivers for venture impact and scale are growing exponentially across Latin America. In this course, we will learn from experts in sustainable ventures and development and focus in on impact strategy and reporting for sustainable and impactful ventures. To gain our on-the-ground experience and exposure, this course will explore two Latin American countries with special attention paid to each country’s history, culture, community, and ecosystems. The overarching question that guides this class centers on how one evaluates, quantifies, and reports on impact and sustainability in a venture.

Peru & Colombia

Lima provides us with an example of a growing Latin American city, replete with climate risk and innovation as well as ventures focusing on community development and other social challenges. Peru’s Sacred Valley will allow us to visit with those protecting and extending ancient indigenous agricultural practices and climate-protective efforts as well as learn about Incan and pre-Incan culture including a visit to the incomparable Machu Picchu.

Medellín, known as the City of Eternal Spring, will be an adventure for our class as we visit a city that has put great effort to transform from dangerous to majestic, from poverty-stricken to increased reduced inequity, and from rising temperatures and poor air quality to one of the planet’s greenest cities, replete with green corridors and climate innovation.

Faculty Bio

Professor Megan Kashner serves as the Director ofSocial Impact & Sustainability at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In her leadership of Kellogg's Social Impact and Sustainability offerings, Kashner focuses on the areas of sustainable finance, social innovation, climate strategy, social sector leadership, policy, global development, corporate responsibility, values and ethics. Kashner leads up the globalImpact & Sustainable Finance Faculty Consortium, theKellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, and more collaborative work at the intersection of markets and impact. Kashner is additionally the co-founder ofColorful Capital a VC firm focusing investment and opportunity on ventures led by LGBTQIA+ community members. Previously, Kashner held leadership roles as a CEO, social entrepreneur, and consultant. Kashner holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, a Master's from the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration and a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University.