PeopleFund

(Community Matters) A PeopleFund board executive committee meeting this morning. These board colleagues among my favorite in the community. Include our board chair Cloteal Davis Haynes plus Pat O’Breirne, Adrienne Neely, Jack McDonald and Gary Valdez. Others on our board include Doug Hartman, Mandy Dealey, Carmen Tawil, Bryan Jones, Debbie Ramirez and Francie Ferguson. Of course our CEO, Margo Weisz is an acknowledged rock star. She surrounds herself with an excellent team including chief lieutenants Anne Adams, Jaime Noyola and Kelly Weiss.PeopleFund operates as a bank making loans to businesses creating jobs and wealth in low & moderate income communities. We’re not a microlender since we loan $50k to $200k and require collateralized sources of repayment. However, we will take more risk than a commercial lender and couple our financial capital with intensive intellectual capital such as mentoring, accounting, legal, marketing and other programs. Additionally, we launched a community land trust, PeopleTrust, last year which is the affordable housing partner at the Robert Mueller Airport Redevelopment and we’ll be doing more affordable housing projects outside of that development. Check out the website PeopleFund.