HOUSTON, March 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BBVA Compass
and Opportunity Finance Network today announced the names of the 27
dedicated leaders at community development financial institutions
who were selected for the 2018 Opportunity Fellows Program,
their joint initiative to boost the CDFI industry's leadership
ranks and spur greater access to capital in under-resourced
communities.
CDFIs are critical engines of opportunity in low-income
communities. They are focused exclusively on bringing capital and
technical assistance to those who don't have access to traditional
bank financing. The 27 Opportunity Fellows include emerging,
mid-career and executive-level professionals and come from across
the United States, including areas
with high levels of poverty and income inequality where the work
they do is even more pressing. They will be given nine months of
training with experts in leadership development and diversity,
inclusion and equity — all designed to better support their
organizations' efforts to deliver responsible, affordable lending
to low-income, low-wealth, and other underserved communities,
especially communities of color.
"These 27 individuals are doing transformational work in our
communities," said BBVA Compass Community Development Finance
Manager Tiena Johnson-Hall, who
served on the Opportunity Fellows Program selection committee.
"They create opportunities for families and small businesses to
reach higher and go farther, and the Opportunity Fellows Program is
designed to help them carry forward their missions with
confidence."
This is the second year that BBVA Compass and OFN, the leading
membership organization for CDFIs, have joined forces to help
cultivate the next generation of leaders and prepare them to
influence and reshape their organizations and the industry.
The selection committee chose the 27 Opportunity Fellows from
among 79 applicants. The 2018 Opportunity Fellows Program will
commence in May for the first of two training sessions in BBVA
Compass' headquarters city of Birmingham,
Ala. The second training session is slated for September 2018, and the participants' final stop
for the program will be the OFN Conference in Chicago in October.
During the sessions, participants will engage in interactive
activities and experiences, and will learn from leaders in
community development finance as well as Birmingham community leaders to understand how
to facilitate organizational change that promotes greater diversity
and inclusion within their CDFIs as they pursue more equitable
investment in communities. To develop the agenda and curriculum,
OFN is partnering with the University of
Alabama at Birmingham Collat School of Business and the Race
Matters Institute.
"We are incredibly excited for this year's class of Opportunity
Fellows," said Donna Fabiani,
Executive Vice President, Knowledge Sharing at OFN. "They represent
a diverse range of emerging and seasoned leaders in the CDFI
industry that are strongly committed to being drivers of change for
equitable impact through CDFI investments."
For more information about the Opportunity Fellows Program,
please click here and here.
To view a video recap from 2017, go to
bbva.info/OFP2017.
Executive Leaders
- Tina Campbell (Lancaster, Pa.), ASSETS Lancaster
- Monica Edwards (San Francisco), BRIDGE Impact Capital
- Larry Holman (Beaufort, S.C.), Beaufort County Black Chamber
of Commerce
- Everett K. Sands (Brea, Calif.), Lendistry
- Tunua Thrash-Ntuk (Los
Angeles), LA LISC
- Brett C. Traver (Somerset, Ky.), Southeast Kentucky Economic
Development Corporation (SKED)
- Paul Turney (Bryan, Texas), Brazos Valley CDC, Inc.
- Jon Welty (Columbus, Ohio), Ohio Capital Finance
Corporation
Mid-Career Leaders
- Robin Brule (Albuquerque, N.M.), Nusenda Credit Union
- Cynthia Garcia (Weslaco, Texas), Affordable Homes of
South Texas, Inc.
- Joe Huber (Cincinnati, Ohio), Cincinnati Development
Fund
- Amber Kani (Austin, Texas), PeopleFund
- Purvi Patel (San Francisco), Self-Help Federal Credit
Union
- Adria Quinones-Masur
(San Jose, Calif.), Housing Trust
Silicon Valley
- Joanna Ramirez Barrett
(Minneapolis, Minn.), Meda
- Ebonie Reed (St. Louis, Mo.), Justine Petersen
- Namoch Sokhom (Los Angeles),
PACE Finance Corporation
- Anthony Young (Memphis, Tenn.), River City Capital
Emerging Leaders
- Ashlee Barker (Lansing, Mich.), Cinnaire
- David Dinoff (Austin, Texas), BCL of Texas
- Brandon Dorman (Port Angeles, Wash.), Craft3
- Agnetha Jaime Gloshay
(Albuquerque, N.M.), Accion
- Davin Gordon (Kansas City, Mo.), AltCap
- Priscilla Jang (San Mateo, Calif.), Working Solutions
- Katrin Kark (Washington, D.C.), Rural LISC
- Ebony Perkins (Durham, N.C.), Self-Help
- Katie Vail (Jersey City, N.J.), New Jersey Community
Capital
Selection committee members included:
- Bob Dickerson, Executive
Director, Birmingham Business Resource Center
- Donna Fabiani, Executive Vice
President of Knowledge Sharing, Opportunity Finance Network
- David Fleming, CEO, Rev
Birmingham
- Tiena Johnson-Hall, Community
Development Finance Manager, BBVA Compass
- Lauren Stebbins,
Vice President of Knowledge Sharing, Opportunity Finance
Network
To learn more about BBVA Compass, visit:
www.bbvacompass.com.
For more news visit: www.bbva.com and
newsroom.bbvacompass.com.
About BBVA Group
BBVA (NYSE: BBVA) is a
customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857.
The Group has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market,
is the largest financial institution in Mexico, it has leading franchises in
South America and the Sunbelt
Region of the United States; and
it is also the leading shareholder in Garanti, Turkey's biggest bank for market
capitalization. Its diversified business is focused on high-growth
markets and it relies on technology as a key sustainable
competitive advantage. Corporate responsibility is at the core of
its business model. BBVA fosters financial education and inclusion,
and supports scientific research and culture. It operates with the
highest integrity, a long-term vision and applies the best
practices. More information about BBVA Group can be found at
bbva.com.
About BBVA Compass
BBVA Compass is a Sunbelt-based
financial institution that operates 649 branches, including 336 in
Texas, 89 in Alabama, 63 in Arizona, 61 in California, 45 in Florida, 37 in Colorado and 18 in New Mexico. BBVA Compass ranks among the top
25 largest U.S. commercial banks based on deposit market share and
ranks among the largest banks in Alabama (2nd), Texas (4th) and Arizona (6th). BBVA Compass has been
recognized as one of the leading small business lenders by the
Small Business Administration (SBA) and ranked 6th nationally in
the total number of SBA loans originated in fiscal year 2017.
Additional information about BBVA Compass can be found at
www.bbvacompass.com. For more BBVA Compass news, follow
@BBVACompassNews on Twitter or visit
newsroom.bbvacompass.com.
About OFN
Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), the
national network of community development financial institutions
(CDFIs), strives to ensure low-income and other under-resourced
communities have access to affordable, responsible financial
products and services. Members of OFN are CDFIs that deliver
responsible lending to help low-income communities join the
economic mainstream. Through 2016, OFN's network originated
$54 billion in financing in rural,
urban, and Native communities. This financing has helped to create
or maintain more than 1,202,000 jobs, start or expand more than
256,000 businesses and microenterprises, and support the
development or rehabilitation of nearly 2 million housing units and
more than 10,000 community facility projects. For more information,
visit www.ofn.org.
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SOURCE BBVA Compass