The Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge harnesses the power of capital markets and student creativity to create positive impact in a world of perpetual resource scarcity and continued population growth. Every year, the Kellogg School of Management and Morgan Stanley partner to host the challenge where teams of graduate students from around the globe develop and pitch creative financial approaches to tackle our world’s most pressing challenges.

Awards

$15,000 in prizes will be awarded to the winning teams:

• Overall First Place: $10,000
• Overall Runner-up: $5,000

Along with the overall first place prize money, the winning team will be invited to attend and present on a panel with Dave Chen, CEO and Principal of Equilibrium Capital and co-founder of the Challenge at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles. The conference convenes approximately 3,500 of the best minds in the world to tackle the most stubborn challenges.

Eligibility

• Graduate students from around the world are invited to participate in the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge.
• Teams are limited to a maximum of four members, all of whom must be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of the prospectus submission, and the team cannot include more than one member who is pursuing an Executive MBA. A team may include members from different graduate schools.
• All ideas must be the original ideas of the team members.
• Each team is required to submit a two-page prospectus outlining their proposal. From the submitted prospectuses, ten teams will be selected to present at the finals competition.
• At least one team member should be available to present at the finals competition, if the team is chosen to advance to that round, and all team members attending the finals competition should plan to stay for the entire event. Please note that any team member not in attendance at the finals competition will not share in any prizes awarded to that team.

Judging Criteria 

The following criteria are applicable to both the first and final rounds of the competition:

• Creativity and Financial Innovations (25%)
• Impact and Scale (25%)
• Feasibility (25%)
• Quality of due diligence and financials (20%)
• Presentation (5%)