Internship Spotlight: Eliza Chory-Noyes ’25, REDF
Eliza Chory-Noyes ’25 spent the summer at a venture philanthropy firm that aims to create jobs and foster economic mobility in the U.S.
We asked rising second-year MBA students to check in from their summer internships, where they applied the lessons of their first year at Yale SOM.
Internship: REDF, remote from New Haven with some travel
Hometown: Concord, MA
Pronouns: she/her/hers
The SOM classes you’re using on the job: Basics of Accounting, Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations, Modern Philanthropy, Inequality and Social Mobility
Go-to work lunch: Leftovers from the latest cookbook I’m trying
After-work routine: Walk/bike up East Rock with my wife, Maggie!
Favorite thing about internship city: In New Haven, I enjoyed the long summer days and relative quiet of a college town in the summer, as well as exploring the Connecticut coastline. Through my internship, I enjoyed getting to travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago for site visits and the REDF retreat.
This summer, I was a Farber Fellow at REDF, a venture philanthropy firm that invests in employment social enterprises through capital (grants and loans), capacity (strategic and technical assistance), and community (industry support and public sector partnerships). The enterprises that REDF invests in are mission-driven organizations that create jobs and economic mobility for overlooked talent across the U.S. They aim to combat barriers to employment, including justice system involvement, housing instability, substance use, mental health challenges, domestic violence or human trafficking, and refugee status.
The Farber Fellowship is an MBA internship program REDF has run for 30 years; most fellows get paired with one employment social enterprise for the whole summer and work on a single strategic project. However, for my Farber internship, I worked directly at REDF on the REDF Impact Investing Fund (RIIF), a community development finance institution (CDFI) that gives flexible, low-interest loans to employment social enterprises to help them scale.
I contributed to several RIIF projects across three areas of focus. My first workstream, portfolio management, involved managing loan originations, supporting borrowers through capacity-building projects, and implementing other hands-on technical assistance. For the second workstream, operational improvements, I upgraded RIIF processes like borrower annual reviews and financial health dashboards to better support internal and external stakeholders. And in my third workstream, strategic and tactical initiatives, I led research and initial integration on two key projects for RIIF’s investment strategy, cash flow-based underwriting and revenue-based finance. These borrower-friendly tools can significantly increase access to capital for historically overlooked businesses.
I also supported the launch of RIIF’s new fund, which will support small businesses in Appalachia with the Ford Foundation as an anchor investor. Given my background underwriting impact funds, I was able to build out the fund’s prospectus and advise on the initial investment strategy.
Prior to SOM, I worked in sustainable and impact investing at Cambridge Associates, sourcing and underwriting market-rate impact funds for institutional investment portfolios. I came to SOM to pivot to an impact-first organization—a nonprofit, family office, or philanthropy—that is addressing systemic causes of social injustice through innovative and cross-sector solutions. REDF was exactly the type of internship I was looking for: each aspect of the firm’s work is aligned with its mission of tackling barriers to employment in the US.
I came to my internship at REDF equipped with some key skills from my first year at SOM. Graduate school has taught me effective time management skills, particularly in a rapidly changing environment. My experience at SOM has also strengthened my ability to build authentic and trust-based relationships in a short amount of time. In addition, while taking the SOM core classes last year, I thought critically about what my non-negotiables are in an employer. Reflecting on these values helped me to land at such an aligned organization for the summer. During the application process, I was lucky to connect with several former SOM Farber Fellows during my interview process, including Cheryl Zhang ’24 and Anna Eapen ’23.
Ultimately, my internship at REDF has helped me progress towards my post-graduation goals. Through my Farber class of 16 fellows, I now have a network of other mission-driven MBA students across the country—along with Farber alumni from the past 30 years! I learned a lot about new industries like social entrepreneurship and grant-based capacity building, and was able to dive more deeply into best practices in impact-first lending and CDFIs.
This year, I am working part-time as a consultant for the RIIF team to continue supporting the strategic projects I launched during my internship. After graduation, I aim to end up at a cross-sector, innovative, impact-first organization—and thanks to my internship at REDF, I feel several steps closer to this goal.
