Economic Opportunity for Everyone: The Role of CDFIs in Advancing and Building Opportunity

Join the Reinvestment Fund and the Penn Institute for Urban Research for the Sixth Annual Jeremy Nowak Memorial Lecture. This year’s lecture will focus on the role Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) play in creating economic opportunity, aligning with the key priorities and vision of Philadelphia’s 100th mayor, Mayor Cherelle Parker. The Parker administration’s central focus is to make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, and greenest big city in the nation with economic opportunity for everyone.

CDFIs like Reinvestment Fund play an influential role in advancing wealth in underserved communities by providing capital, expertise, and technical assistance for a variety of community-led and impact driven projects. Panelists in this year’s 6th annual Nowak Lecture will discuss the varying and holistic ways that their organizations approach community development with an equity lens to advance economic opportunity and build joyful and thriving communities.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Mayor of Philadelphia, will give opening remarks. Panelists include:

· Della Clark, President & CEO of The Enterprise Center, Partner at Innovate Capital, and Vice Chair of Mayor Parker’s Transition;

· Jodie Harris, President of Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which manages local CDFI PIDC Community Capital and former Director of the CDFI Fund;

· Donald Hinkle-Brown, President and CEO of Reinvestment Fund;

· Mihailo Temali, Founder and Senior Advisor of Neighborhood Development Center-MN & President and CEO of the Build from Within Alliance.

The panel will be moderated by Mark Pinsky, Founding Partner of CDFI Friendly America and former CEO of OFN.

The Jeremy Nowak Memorial Lecture series aims to highlight Jeremy Nowak’s enduring work to integrate public, private, and non-profit expertise to achieve collective urban prosperity. This event provides students and professionals with the opportunity to hear from experts on topics that manifest the connections between the academic and the applied aspects of urban development. Learn more about the series and past lectures here.

Speakers

Mayor Cherelle Parker is a single mom who was born and raised in Philadelphia by her grandparents. Cherelle’s family was poor, and food stamps helped put food on the family table. But those early struggles didn’t stop Cherelle, they taught her the importance of community and giving back. Cherelle went on to Lincoln University and The University of Pennsylvania. Her first job was as a high school teacher. Cherelle was elected to the State House of Representatives, where she became the chair of the Philadelphia Delegation. Later, she served on City Council and was elected Majority Leader. A mom, a teacher, and an experienced strong leader, Cherelle Parker is now Philadelphia’s 100th Mayor and the first Woman Mayor in city history. Her paramount goal is to create a safer, cleaner, greener city with economic opportunity for all.

Della Clark’s vision for minority entrepreneurship is not about counting the number of successful businesses but about making businesses count. Since 1992, Ms. Clark has brought this vision to fruition as President of The Enterprise Center – an organization at the forefront of the Greater Philadelphia region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, guided by the mission to cultivate and invest in minority entrepreneurs to inspire economic growth in communities. The Enterprise Center accomplishes this by accelerating the capacity of minority business enterprises to compete in any marketplace through business education, management support, access to capital, and procurement opportunities.

Motivated by her belief that business success is a team sport, Ms. Clark epitomizes the core values of collaboration and economic growth that drive the outcomes of The Enterprise Center as operator of a Pennsylvania and New Jersey MBDA Business Center and a US Department of Transportation Small Business Transportation Resource Center. Under Ms. Clark’s leadership, businesses have obtained more than $870 million in contracts, $209 million in the financing, and created 3,221 jobs through the PA Minority Business Development Center. Minority- and women-owned businesses have secured more than $30 million in loans to start, grow, and succeed through The Enterprise Center Capital Corporation. Clark led efforts to create the Dorrance H. Hamilton Center for Culinary Enterprises, a 13,000+ square-foot food business incubator and hub of community health and nutrition resources in West Philadelphia, now in its 10th year of operation.

One of Ms. Clark’s notable accomplishments was raising the $2.5 million necessary to renovate The Enterprise Center’s headquarters in West Philadelphia, which bears historical significance as the former WFIL-TV studios and birthplace of “American Bandstand.” She is now embarking on bridging the capital gap for minority enterprises and launching a new fund, Innovate Capital Growth Fund, a Small Business Investment Company. The goal for Fund 1 is $50 million and the investment thesis is: to build the balance sheet and scale minority standout companies to create wealth and a new model for future investments.

Clark currently serves as a board member for the Philadelphia Equity Alliance, University City District, and Bridge of Hope CDC and serves as a Trustee of Drexel University. She is also a proud Eisenhower Fellow. Clark was recognized in August 2022 with a Lifetime Achieve Award by the Philadelphia Business Journal. She is one of Philadelphia’s most Influential by the Philadelphia Magazine and is also one the Philadelphia Tribune’s most Influential African American Leaders for over 10 years.

Jodie Harris joined PIDC in June 2023 after nearly two decades serving in various roles in the federal government, including four years as director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund).

As president of PIDC, Jodie works with the City of Philadelphia and Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce—along with stakeholders in the business, civic, and philanthropic communities—to support small businesses, attract investment, and spur development throughout Philadelphia.

Jodie previously served in a variety of roles at the Department of the Treasury, including program manager, senior advisor, and director of community and economic development policy. Prior to her work in government, Jodie held various roles related to community economic development from the very beginning of her career as a community development credit analyst with Meridian Bank, followed by time as a consultant and strategic planning manager at Accenture, and as a research analyst at NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy.

Jodie is a native of Philadelphia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and international business from the University of Maryland and has also earned two graduate degrees from New York University: an MBA in finance and management and an MPA in public policy.

Donald Hinkle-Brown, President and CEO of the Reinvestment Fund, leads a staff of 80 highly skilled financial experts, research analysts, and other professionals at Reinvestment Fund, a catalyst for change in low-income communities. Reinvestment Fund integrates data, policy and strategic investments to improve the quality of life in low-income towns and cities.

Mr. Hinkle-Brown is widely recognized as an expert in mission investing and capacity building through his work developing new programmatic initiatives, raising capital and creating new products that improve opportunity, equity and health for underserved people and places. Under his leadership, Reinvestment Fund launched ReFresh, the nation’s first practitioner network of community lenders committed to improving access to healthy food for all Americans. He has also been instrumental in shaping strategies that leverage efforts at the intersection of health and community development to build thriving communities, including Reinvestment Fund’s pioneering multi-sector initiative in partnership with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Invest Health.

Mr. Hinkle-Brown provides his expertise to many community development loan funds, community organizations, and students, demonstrating a strong personal commitment to building the capacity of peer organizations, community partners, and the next generation of community development professionals. He currently serves as the Chair of the Community Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Board. Closer to home, he also serves as board member to Reinvestment Fund affiliate PolicyMap.

Mr. Hinkle-Brown has served as adjunct faculty at Temple University’s Geography and Urban Studies program and the University of Pennsylvania’s City Planning department. He holds an M.B.A. from the Fox School at Temple University in Real Estate and Urban Planning as well as a B.A. in Economics.

Mihailo (Mike) Temali has been the CEO of Build from Within Alliance sin 2016. BfWA is a national alliance of community organizations from Miami to Anchorage utilizing a comprehensive approach to working with low-income entrepreneurs in low-income communities of color. This method of reaching deep into these communities was pioneered by the Neighborhood Development Center (NDC) in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which he founded and led from 1993 to 2019.

As a wrap around, high-touch and risk tolerant model of place-based training, lending, TA and real estate, this model has supported thousands of neighborhood entrepreneurs across the country as implemented by the affiliates of BfWA, resulting in their entrepreneurs bringing significant economic and social impact to their own neighborhoods. BfWA provides extensive materials, training, networking and product innovation to its members, as they adopt and adapt this approach. BfWA is also advancing this approach on a research and policy level as an important addition to the field of community economic development and economic inclusion, in part with Reinvestment Fund’s Research Division.

While Temali was its CEO, NDC trained over 5000 low-income entrepreneurs in 11-week neighborhood-based business plan courses (over 85% owners of color), with 25% open for business on average for 9 years. NDC is a CDFI, SBA and Reba-Free lender, and is co-owner, developer and manager of six business incubators including Midtown Global Market, Mercado Central, Frogtown Square and Frogtown Crossroads. He led North End Area Revitalization, a CDC in St. Paul’s Rice Street district from 1984 – 1990, focusing on commercial corridor revitalization. Temali is the author of “Community Economic Development Handbook,” and was a Bush Fellow in Boston and Santiago, Chile.

Mark A. Pinsky developed the CDFI Friendly model and is the Founder of CDFI Friendly America. He is a noted strategist, author, and advisor on public-purpose finance. In 2019, he co-authored Organized Money (The New Press with Keith Mestrich). He is a leader in the CDFI industry. Starting in 1992, he played key roles in transformational industry innovations ranging from the CDFI Fund to the Equity Equivalent investment product to the AERIS Ratings System.