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