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Intern getting best of both worlds with two part internship in investments, social investments

Social Investment Practice

Editor’s note: The foundation is hosting nine summer interns or fellows this year from colleges across the U.S. Check back each week to learn about these rising social sector leaders in this series, Summer at Kresge.

Edgar Aguado’s primary goal for his time at The Kresge Foundation is to strengthen the tools in his tool belt when it comes to investments.

Originally from Hanover Park, Illinois, Aguado is a rising junior at the University of Chicago pursuing a degree in economics and joins Kresge as an intern through the John W. Rogers Jr. Internship Program in Finance, which helps to improve the pipeline of people of color into finance careers.

Edgar Aguado, Investment and Social Investments Intern, The Kresge Foundation

Aguado will have a unique experience among Kresge interns and fellows this summer; he’ll split with time between departments, learning two sides of the financial world. He will spend the first half of the summer with the Investment Office, which manages and invests Kresge’s endowment, before transitioning for the second half to the Social Investment Practice, which uses impact investing to pump $350 million into program-aligned work across the U.S.

“I like the exposure I’m getting,” said Aguado, “so that when I do graduate, I know the strategies and what is and isn’t appealing to me.”

He has previous experience working with endowment investments as an intern at Rush University Medical Center last summer, where he gained experience with basic investment strategies.

“My internship last summer was similar,” Aguado said. “I was working for an endowment much smaller than Kresge’s, and that really exposed me to the foundation world and the idea of using assets to do good.”

He plans to further develop that knowledge this summer while working with the more complex investment strategies that Kresge uses to grow and manage its $3.8 billion endowment.

One major project he looks forward to is comparing asset managers at Kresge to those stored in a database called eVestment. This will help identify how investors at Kresge perform compared to others.

Aguado’s most ambitious project will fall during his time as the Social Investment Practice intern. There, he will help research proposals submitted for potential partners in Opportunity Zones, a tax incentive program for investors to invest their unrealized capital gain into distressed neighborhoods.

“My biggest goal here is to learn as much as I can,” Aguado said. “I want to learn more about the different strategies and how different investment sectors work.