Twelve teams are advancing to the final round of the competition, and the graduate students will present their proposals on April 24th to a group of sustainable investing professionals. Judges will choose winners with financially innovative ideas that can drive sustainability impact at scale.

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Meet the 12 finalist teams proposing innovative ways to use finance as a force for good:

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AAA Fund 

• Proposal: This blended finance credit facility is designed to restore Indonesia's degraded coastal mangrove ponds through community cooperatives, generating returns from blue carbon credits and aggregated silvofishery shrimp sales.

• Schools: University of Chicago, Duke University

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​Amazonia Yield Bond 

• Proposal: Aiming to break the cycle of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, this securitization is structured to finance agroforestry by aggregating asset-backed loans to smallholder agricultural cooperatives and generating returns from carbon credits and sustainable timber.

• School: Imperial College London

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Blue Barrier Capital

• Proposal: This proposed blue bond intercepts sargassum seaweed overgrowth offshore, converts it into saleable bioproducts, and funds operations via a sovereign tourism levy, turning a Caribbean ecological liability into a revenue-generating solution.

• School: INSEAD

 

Community Health Equity Capital Fund 

• Proposal: This blended finance private credit fund proposes financing the expansion of Federally Qualified Health Centers in underserved US communities, generating returns through a self-reinforcing loop of base interest, shared savings contracts with Managed Care Organizations, and 340B pharmacy revenues that are directly tied to improved patient health outcomes.

• School: Cornell University

 

Everflow Capital Africa 

• Proposal: This proposed private credit fund would provide short-term receivables factoring to NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa to bridge donor payment delays, enabling development programs to continue uninterrupted.

• School: Columbia University

 

​GeoServe

• Proposal: Using a Build-Own-Transfer model, this multi-stage capital platform is designed to de-risk and scale district-level geothermal heating and cooling infrastructure for energy-insecure low-income communities in the US.

• School: Duke University

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​Mahila Textile Accelerator

• Proposal: Designed to provide collateral-free working capital to women-owned textile micro-enterprises in India, this proposed blended private credit fund uses India's Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS), shifting credit risk from sellers to institutional buyers.

• Schools: Tufts University 

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Mekong Resilience Fund

• Proposal: This blended finance vehicle aims to finance climate-resilient infrastructure in Vietnam's Mekong Delta through performance-linked "Success Fees" from global corporate off-takers whose supply chains depend on the region.

• School: Nanyang Technological University

 

​NO3 Impact Fund

• Proposal: This pay-for-success structure proposes paying farmers in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate to adopt precision agriculture, reducing nitrate groundwater contamination, with returns tied to verified environmental and health outcomes.

• School: EDHEC Business School

 

Nusantara Resilient Capital

• Proposal: Utilizing a fully collateralized parametric catastrophe bond, this proposal transfers Sumatra's sovereign flood risk to capital markets while ring-fencing excess margins for upstream reforestation.

• School: Columbia University

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Re-Husk Fund

• Proposal: Creating a circular economy that benefits farmers, CPG companies, and the environment, this proposed fund finances the construction of US Midwest facilities that convert excess corn husks into sustainable fiber packaging.​

• School: Northwestern University

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​Sea Change Capital

• Proposal: This closed-end blended finance vehicle simultaneously finances port bunkering infrastructure and vessel retrofits on the Singapore-Shanghai corridor, contractually locking both together to eliminate maritime decarbonization's chicken-and-egg problem.

• School: INSEAD​​