Alumni Spotlight: Amy Bell

Written by Celesia Smith.

Amy Bell Headshot

Amy Bell

One of the hardest things to learn in life is how to create your own path– Canfield BHP alumnae Amy Bell is a perfect example of someone who did just that. After graduating from UT in 2003 with a degree in Canfield BHP, a minor in Spanish, and a Masters in Public Accounting (MPA), Amy went on to become a trailblazer in the field of environmental, social, governance (ESG) finance. 

As a student, Amy was always interested in social impact as a career path, but the opportunities and terminology surrounding impact-based careers at UT were not as developed when she attended college as they are today. 

“The lexicon was different when I was at UT from 1998 through 2003. People weren’t yet talking about social entrepreneurship or those types of things, but there were definitely phrases like economic development and community finance,” Amy said. “The microfinance space was starting to be a little bit more present in the popular vernacular although it honestly didn’t start to take off until the mid to late 2000s. I was just really interested in this idea of capitalism as a force for good, thinking about stakeholders in a way that we’re not only driving profits but also longer-term sustainability and societal impact.” 

Canfield BHP professors and administrators like Robert Prentice, the former Director of Canfield BHP, helped Amy cultivate this love for impact and combine it with finance. 

“Professors, including Dr. Prentice, who was one of my favorites, and a couple of others said, ‘It’s really wonderful that you have this passion and interest in impact. You also probably want to have a skill to pair with it.’ and through a process of testing out different ideas and taking classes in my first couple of years at UT I realized that the financial and analytical and numbers side of things just really worked well for my brain, so I ended up choosing accounting as a major,” Amy said.

While Amy never actually became an accountant, she used the analytical and business skills she built during her time at UT throughout her career. Amy worked at Deloitte for two years upon graduation before ending up at JP Morgan for over a decade. At JP Morgan Amy worked as an investment banker before becoming the head of Principal Investments for Sustainable Finance. 

“I really loved that idea of marrying banking and finance with social impact– the opportunity to address poverty and economic inequality around the world,” Amy said. “We were investing in a way that would generate a return for the bank, that also would show that we’d had a direct and positive impact on, in particular, low-income populations but also just in general, underrepresented or underserved people, both domestically as well as abroad.”

After leaving JP Morgan, Amy spent time working with a company called EcoEnterprises, which does work around sustainable agriculture across Latin America. Now she works with Whole Foods, making strategic investments that support the mission of nourishing both people and the planet.

“(Right now) I’m in the early stages of another chapter in my career journey, having made this very intentional step towards having more impact in food systems. That’s sort of how I came about to where I am now, working on this intrapreneurial team,” Amy said. “It’s really changing the way we think about how we invest in suppliers because the work we do creates an impact on food systems overall and how people eat.”

Amy said her time in the Canfield Business Honors Program has impacted her in various ways, from providing an unequaled business education to connecting her with a high-quality community to match. 

“The well-rounded nature of the (Canfield BHP) education sets it apart. It’s about learning how to manage teams and to problem solve and to develop a project in response to a somewhat ambiguous challenge or question that’s posed by a professor,” Amy said. “The other thing I would highlight is the sheer quality of people within the honors program. A number of the people (I graduated with) are still really close friends of mine, almost 20 years after (graduating) which is crazy to think about, but you just develop really, really strong relationships (in Canfield BHP). Those people have been friends for me personally, but have also been really great advisors and mentors as I’ve sort of explored pathways.”

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