Texas Border Business
McAllen, Texas – Cynthia Garcia, Director of Grants and Resource Development for Affordable Homes of South Texas, Inc. recently completed the Opportunity Fellows Program through the Opportunity Finance Network.
The Opportunity Fellows Program, an innovative leadership program for the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Industry, brought together a diverse cohort of 27 CDFI leaders from across the United States to learn about facilitating and leading systemic change within their own organizations with the goal of ensuring equitable investment in underserved and disenfranchised communities over a nine-month period.
Cynthia participated in a team project focused on increasing risk of lending to communities that have been traditionally denied access to affordable credit. Her team came up with several creative suggestions for the CDFI industry, including using alternative credit histories for assessing credit-readiness and working with community partners to underwrite loans.
Through the program, participants developed the knowledge and skills to:
•Create opportunities for critical, but constructive dialogue that challenges people’s values, beliefs and behaviors related to diversity, inclusion and equity;
•Evaluate organizational structures, policies and practices that either enable or discourage inclusion and equitable investment;
•Develop actionable frameworks and processes for facilitating systemic change within their organizations and the CDFI industry to promote equitable investment.
The Opportunity Fellows Program was offered by Opportunity Finance Network with generous support from BBVA Compass. The program included experiential leadership development from world-class trainers and robust interactions with industry and community leaders. The program concluded on October 8, 2018, with graduates presenting group projects that were developed over the nine-month period.
