About
Former CEO (1980-2012) of National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, a nonprofit association of minority and other low-income financial cooperatives. Trained as a Russian historian; coauthor of Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar (A.A. Knopf, 1975; multiple republications in U.S., Mexico, Turkey). Author of Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions (FriesenPress, 2018). First manager of the Office of Financial Empowerment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2012-14). First non-African American inductee into the African American Credit Union Coalition Hall of Fame (2019).
Featured Work
Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions Movement
History of efforts to provide credit to low-income, working class, and people of color, from Benjamin Franklin to the establishment of the Treasury Department Community Development Financial Institutions(CDFI) Fund under President Bill Clinton. Written by a cofounder and long time leader of the CDFI movement, who was trained as a historian at Columbia University.
