Human-Centered, Future-Focused Student Leadership in the Time of COVID-19

By Madison Gove, Social Innovation Initiative Program Manager

(Clockwise from top: Andrew Jones, Linda Duraj, Atharva Sinha, and Dhruv Dhuper on Zoom)

“Times like this make me feel really grateful to have an executive board that can think outside of the box and members that are committed to the goals of the organization.” — Linda Duraj, SIG President

The COVID-19 pandemic cut many Longhorns’ time on the 40 Acres unexpectedly short.

Despite facing a new normal in work and school, and while facing their own personal challenges, Longhorns across the world are stepping up to care for their classmates. A prime example of this is the leadership team of the Sustainability Investment Group (SIG), an interdisciplinary student organization that trains students to think about investing through the lens of social and environmental impact. Instead of cancelling the organization’s activities for the rest of the semester, the executive team — consisting of Linda Duraj (‘21), Atharva Sinha (‘21), Dhruv Dhuper (‘21), and Andrew Jones (’20) — pivoted their organization of about 30 interdisciplinary students to online interaction over Spring Break.

During a normal semester, students would apply to SIG as analysts or portfolio managers, and spend the semester learning through a rigorous finance curriculum that “incorporates what have traditionally been considered non-financial criteria, including factors like climate risk, environmental sustainability, and minority representation on boards.” While self-teaching, members would also research and pitch stocks to Social Innovation Initiative faculty for inclusion in a mock ESG portfolio. However, after quickly collecting feedback from members on what they wanted from the organization during the pandemic, the executive team shifted gears and set students to work conducting research on ESG topics — including how the COVID-19 crisis will impact sustainable finance. In addition, the four student leaders collaborated with the SII to set up virtual speaker events with organizations like Wells Fargo and the Southwest Angel Network (SWAN) to keep students engaged in the field.

What truly sets these leaders apart, however, is their prioritization of members’ physical and mental well-being. The executive team is holding check-ins with each member to see if they are facing any challenges, and working to give students opportunities for social connection.

In SIG President Linda Duraj’s words:

“We are continuing to operate the organization because we want our members to continue to learn and interact during this time. We started this organization about a year ago, so as a new organization we definitely want our members to still feel connected and engaged even if we are not on campus. We are still using Slack as our primary source of communication but have shifted some of our traditional meeting activities online. For example, our weekly market updates have gone from a presentation to a written summary, and we turned our stock pitches into research reports that members will work on in groups. We are staying connected by scheduling one-on-one meetings with our executive board and our members. We are also working on getting speakers to present over Zoom so that we are still interacting with people that are working in the industry…

By the end of the semester, we really just want our members to stay safe and feel connected to our organization the best they can. We hope by continuing projects and activities, we will be able to learn and still have fun throughout the semester.…….. we want to give members a way to still feel connected with SIG without making them feel overwhelmed in these difficult times. This hasn’t been too challenging because our members really care about SIG and learning about ESG Investing. We had to cancel some events we had planned for the semester, such as our Impact Investing competition, but we have been able to effectively pivot to online in a way that keeps us all connected.”

SIG’s leadership is just one of countless examples of student tenacity across our (virtual) campus over the last month. Our students’ resolve during this difficult time reminds each of us that we have many brighter days ahead. Thank you to Linda, Dhruv, Andrew, Atharva, and all of our other student leaders at McCombs for remaining human-centered and future-focused!

Note — SIG is a sponsored student organization of the Social Innovation Initiative. You can learn more about their work here.