Investment Analyst, Place-Based Practice

Portland, OR - Full-Time - In-Office 

About Occam Advisors

Occam Advisors is a Portland-based impact-investing advisory firm. We help community foundations and family offices design and manage mission-aligned investment portfolios — specifically program-related investments (PRIs), mission-related investments, and other impact capital strategies that connect funding to mission-driven non-profit and for-profit organizations. Our clients include community and place-based foundations in Oregon, California, Hawaiʻi, and the Bay Area, plus family-office and international clients.

The role

You will be the primary analyst supporting Occam's place-based practice — the community-foundation programs led by our senior team (Theresa Deibele, Sayer Jones, and Patrick Maloney). You will draft investment memos, prepare client committee materials, engage directly with borrowers and foundation staff, manage investee check-ins and reporting, and help run the operational spine of multiple foundation engagements.

Investment analysis & writing (roughly 40%)

  • Draft investment memos for new opportunities: diligence, sources & uses, structure, risk, impact thesis.

  • Prepare board and committee materials for client investment committees: cover memos, portfolio assessments, re-up and extension memos.

  • Support portfolio scans and opportunity scans that map a foundation's grantmaking landscape to investable entities.

Client & external engagement (roughly 25%)

  • Organize agendas and lead client check-ins; take notes, own follow-ups.

  • Run external stakeholder conversations directly: foundation program staff, borrower developers, loan officers. Negotiate covenant questions and reporting-cadence issues with senior-team backup.

  • Own the agenda cadence for recurring practice meetings and keep the senior team aligned on what's landing when.

  • Support senior team in business development activities, including attending conferences and drafting proposals.

Portfolio management (roughly 25%)

  • Track annual reporting from all portfolio borrowers; review covenant compliance and draft waivers, if appropriate.

  • Schedule annual check-in calls with each borrower; gather impact data and cull themes to draft impact reports and portfolio assessments for each client.

  • Maintain our central database and related processes, including financial and impact reporting, covenant tracking, and investment opportunity scans across clients.

  • Produce client-facing reconciliation and portfolio reports; flag risk items for senior review.

Systems & AI-supported workflow (roughly 10%)

  • Build and iterate on data structure, templates and reports so client deliverables are consistent and improving across engagements

  • Partner with our operations lead on LLM automations for reporting, opportunity-scan generation, and committee-packet assembly. Help evaluate what should be automated vs. what keeps us human, learning new things and present for each other.

What we're looking for

Should-haves

  • We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job, and that candidate may come from a less traditional background. We encourage you to think broadly about your background and qualifications and apply.  If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t perfectly align with every requirement below, we encourage you to apply anyway.

  • Ideally, 2–4 years of relevant experience: impact investing, community development finance, CDFI lending, foundation program work, nonprofit finance, or credit analysis at a bank.  Absent this experience, we would expect an applicant to communicate a genuine passion for our work or the communities we serve.

  • Strong writing ability. This job involves both quickly synthesizing multiple threads into brief communications and drafting longer, more complex investment memos over the course of weeks. 

  • Fluency in presentation and spreadsheet tools and comfort learning Airtable (or equivalent relational tools). Experience using LLM tools (Cowork, NotebookLM) for research or operations workflows.

  • Project management instincts. You will be the coordination hub for 4+ client engagements running in parallel; you need your own system for keeping track of what's due, from whom, and when.

  • Demonstrated values alignment with racial equity, social justice, and impact investing.

  • Comfort with an informal, small-team environment where scope shifts and you're expected to bring your own imprint to the work.

  • Proactive support for the team with a point of view and solutions mindset.

Nice-to-haves

  • Experience with community foundations, PRIs, or place-based capital strategies.

  • Familiarity with affordable housing, small-business lending, or food-systems.

  • Oregon, Washington, California, or Hawaiʻi ties — our client geographies.

What success looks like at 90 days

  • You've taken over the agenda and running notes for the weekly Place-Based meeting and the client meetings.

  • You've drafted at least one investment memo end-to-end with senior review.

  • You have found at least one repetitive task in our workflow and automated it 

  • You've built a point of view on one opportunity-scan or portfolio area and presented it to the senior team.

Logistics

  • Location: Portland, OR— in office; occasional travel to client meetings

  • Compensation: $65,000, negotiable based on experience. We list salary transparently in support of equity in hiring.

  • Start date: As soon as possible

  • If interested: Submit a cover letter and resume to jobs@occamadvisors.com