About Aurora:  Aurora grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, in an entrepreneurial environment shaped by Indonesian arts and culture. That early exposure sparked her interest in building and investing in businesses with purpose. Before Anderson, she worked as an Investment Associate at a Southeast Asia-focused fund backed by a Korean conglomerate, where she evaluated growth-stage investments across Indonesia. She began her career in consulting at Deloitte before moving to Kearney, where she developed a strong foundation in strategy and problem-solving. At UCLA Anderson, Aurora is exploring how to translate her investing experience into impact, with a focus on sustainability. As a first-year, she also helped organize and launch SEABA’s inaugural Bali, Indonesia trek, bringing together classmates to experience Southeast Asia firsthand. Outside of school, you can find her exploring LA’s ever-growing food scene.

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Coming into Anderson with a growing interest in venture capital and impact investing, I was looking for a way to move beyond theory and get hands-on experience. That search led me to Anderson Venture Impact Partners (AVIP), which became one of the most defining parts of my first-year MBA experience.

AVIP is structured as both a student organization and a two-quarter academic sequence, where participation requires enrolling in Impact Investing I in the fall and Impact Investing II in the winter. The design is intentional. It creates a direct bridge between learning the fundamentals of early-stage and impact investing and actually applying them in practice.

In the fall, the focus was on building that foundation. We developed our understanding of venture investing, defined an investment thesis within our assigned vertical, and began sourcing startups. The program is divided into several verticals, including sustainability, housing, financial inclusion, education, and healthcare. As part of the sustainability vertical, my team defined a thesis centered on lifecycle decarbonization and material efficiency across the clean energy ecosystem, with a focus on upstream solutions that reduce carbon intensity and industrial waste.

From there, the experience quickly became hands-on. We sourced early-stage startups through platforms like PitchBook, the UCLA ecosystem, and investor referrals, and spoke directly with founders to understand their businesses. After evaluating a broad pipeline, we narrowed our focus to a smaller set of companies that aligned closely with our thesis. By the end of the quarter, we presented our sourcing funnel and initial recommendations, receiving feedback that helped sharpen both our thesis and our approach to evaluating early-stage opportunities.

In the winter, the work shifted toward execution. Impact Investing II focused on conducting deep due diligence, building financial models, and developing full investment memos. We also prepared for two separate investment committee processes, each with a different purpose.

The first was for the Turner MIINT competition. Before advancing to the final competition, external MIINT judges visit participating business schools to evaluate each team and select one to represent the school. This meant our team had to present our investment case in a competitive setting, knowing that only one vertical would move forward.

The second was AVIP’s own investment committee, where each vertical presents its selected startup for a potential $50K investment from UCLA’s student-led impact fund. Unlike MIINT, which selects a single representative team, AVIP’s IC allows multiple verticals to move forward, depending on the strength of each investment case.

These presentations were where the experience felt most real. We presented in front of a committee composed of faculty members and experienced investors, which required us to clearly articulate our investment thesis, defend our assumptions, and balance impact with financial returns. While our sustainability vertical was not selected to represent UCLA in MIINT, both the sustainability and financial inclusion verticals were selected to move forward to AVIP’s investment committee.

Our team focused on a company working on circular critical mineral recovery from bauxite residue. The opportunity reflected the type of upstream, systems-level innovation our thesis was designed to support. Evaluating the company required us to go beyond surface-level impact and assess scalability, cost structure, and long-term viability.

Throughout the process, we were paired with experienced venture investors who served as advisors. Their guidance pushed us to think more rigorously, challenge our assumptions, and approach each opportunity with a disciplined investor mindset.

What stood out most about AVIP was how quickly it moves you from learning about investing to actually practicing it. Instead of discussing frameworks in the abstract, you are sourcing deals, engaging with founders, and defending real investment decisions. That shift made the experience both challenging and deeply formative, and it played a meaningful role in shaping how I think about impact investing today.

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Student Blogger: Aurora Zafira ’27
Undergrad: University of Indonesia ’21
Pre-MBA: Investment Associate at SK Inc.
Leadership@Anderson: President of Southeast Asian Business Association; EVP Club Management of Entrepreneurship Association; VP Finance of Asian Management Student Association; VP of Finance of Muslim Business Student Association; VP Finance of Wine Club