Experience Stern | News

• The student-led NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) has completed its seventh investment, backing ASL Aspire
• NIIF is the first-of-its-kind student-operated impact investment fund built on a unique cross-school collaboration between NYU’s Stern School of Business, NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and NYU Abu Dhabi
• Now in its eighth year, NIIF has supported nearly 300 students and made $200,000 in investments in seven companies

Fund makes investment in ASL Aspire

The student-led NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) has completed its seventh investment, backing ASL Aspire, an edtech company that builds interactive, game-based STEM learning tools for K–12 Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) students.

Why did NIIF select this company for its 2026 investment?

“Our student-led Deal Teams look for that sweet spot of companies that can have a significant impact, for whom NIIF’s capital and other support can be truly meaningful, and that provide the best learning opportunity for our students throughout the process. ASL Aspire has tremendous impact potential in a unique area of need and is quite early in its journey, where the type of impact-first investment that NIIF was positioned to make can propel them toward their next success milestone,” said Professor Andrea Armeni of NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, who oversees NIIF. 

According to Ayesha Kazi, COO of ASL Aspire, “This investment will allow us to continue scaling ASL Aspire’s impact and bring accessible STEM education to even more deaf and hard of hearing students across the country. We’re incredibly grateful to NIIF for the support and belief in our mission.”

What is distinctive about NIIF?

The NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) is the first-of-its-kind student-led impact investment fund built on a unique cross-school collaboration between NYU’s Stern School of Business, NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and NYU Abu Dhabi. Students from across NYU are eligible to apply, and deal teams include graduate and undergraduate students.

According to Florencia Dagyeong Yi (BS '26), team lead for the Education Deal Team, which pitched ASL Aspire, "Through this experience with NIIF, my team and I learned how to deal with ambiguity, including breaking down milestones and final deliverables into actionable steps, efficiently delegating, and effectively utilizing class resources. This taught me how to create structure out of uncertainty and work through complex problems step by step, skills that I will take with me to my future career. I’m grateful for my team because each member contributed in unique ways and created a comfortable environment where we could make mistakes and learn." 

Why is NIIF a valuable experiential learning opportunity for aspiring impact investors?

NIIF students experience all phases of an investment cycle, as well as the operational workings of an impact fund. The cross-pollination between students from different schools and with different training is an added benefit of the real-time learning experience.  Students interested in impact investing as well as entrepreneurship, grantmaking or policy making, get front line exposure to how investors operate and the inner workings of the early-stage investment process.

NIIF is supported by NYU Stern’s Experiential Learning team, and additional mentorship is offered by alumni through the NYU Impact Investing Alumni Club. NIIF acts as a springboard for preparing emerging professionals for competitive impact investing roles globally while providing much-needed investment capital to early-stage impact enterprises.  It is funded, in part, by Golub Capital through the Golub Capital Social Impact Investment Education Fund, which was created in 2024.

NIIF’s Investment Committee is composed of three Stern and Wagner alumni practitioners: Graham Macmillan of The Inter-American Development Bank Group's IDB Lab, Monique Aiken of The Investment Integration Project, and Maria D. Toler of SteelSky Ventures. The due diligence for NIIF’s investment prospects was supported pro bono by Orrick's global Impact Finance & Investment practice.

Now in its eighth year, NIIF has supported nearly 300 students and made $200,000 in investments in seven companies (see below), including ASL Aspire:

• Rolli, a company dedicated to fostering a thriving media ecosystem by equipping journalists with innovative tools and resources
• Maternova, a company improving maternal and neonatal health in low-resource settings
• Sapient Industries, an environmental impact company
• SmartGurlz, a STEM business teaching young girls to code
• KIGT, a company that brings electric vehicle charging stations to underserved communities
• EdVisorly, a community college-to-university platform
   

NIIF continues next academic year with 35 graduate and undergraduate students, competitively selected from a large pool of applicants.

About the NYU Impact Investment Fund

A joint venture between the faculty advisors and students of New York University’s Stern and Wagner schools in New York and NYU Abu Dhabi — NIIF leverages the diverse expertise of business and public service faculty to support student investors targeting enterprises in sectors such as financial inclusion, healthcare, education, and food systems. Philanthropic support for NIIF comes from foundations, alumni, and Golub Capital through the Golub Capital Social Impact Investment Education Fund. The experiential course includes processes to train the students on impact investing, provides practitioner guest lecturers, and creates an interdisciplinary learning laboratory. NIIF is pursuing additional donations and grants to enable this experiential platform to continue well into the future. Learn more on the NIIF website.

About NYU Stern School of Business 

New York University Stern School of Business, located in the heart of Greenwich Village and deeply connected with the City for which it is named, is one of the nation’s premier management education schools and research centers. NYU Stern offers a broad portfolio of transformational programs at the graduate, undergraduate and executive levels, all of them enriched by the dynamism and deep resources of one of the world’s business capitals. NYU Stern is a welcoming community that inspires its members to embrace and lead change in a rapidly transforming world. Visit www.stern.nyu.edu.

About NYU Wagner

Since 1938, NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service has been educating and preparing the world's future public service leaders to translate ideas into actions that have an effective and lasting impact on the public good. Our faculty’s research changes the way people frame, understand, and act on important public issues. We provide our students with critical skills, access to all that New York City has to offer, and a deep understanding of the context surrounding public service challenges—which they use to improve cities and communities across the globe. Ranked seventh nationally among all schools of public affairs, we offer a Master of Public Administration in Public & Nonprofit Management & Policy, Master of Public Administration in Health Policy & Management, Master of Urban Planning, Master of Health Administration, Master of Science in Public Policy, Executive Master of Public Administration, and PhD in Public Administration. Learn more at NYU Wagner.