Michael Swack
University of New Hampshire
Director, Center for Impact Finance, Carsey School
Michael Swack is Director, Center for Impact Finance, Carsey School, University of New Hampshire. He is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he has appointments at the Carsey School of Public Policy and at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. He directs the Center for Impact Finance and the master’s program in Community Development, a program designed for adult practitioners. At Carsey, he is working on building scale in the community development finance sector, innovations in community development finance, microfinance, and sustainable energy financing. He also directs the Financial Innovations Roundtable, a collaboration with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He has over 35 years of experience in the fields of economic development, finance, and development banking. Mr. Swack was the founder and former dean of the School of Community Economic Development (CED) at Southern New Hampshire University. He has been involved in the design, implementation, and management of a number community development lending and investment institutions both inside and outside the United States. He was the first chairman and served for 17 years as a board member of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA), a state-chartered equity fund for community economic development ventures and projects. He is the founding president and a current board member of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. He was a founding board member of the National Association of Community Development Loan Funds (now the Opportunity Finance Network), a trade association of Community Development Finance Institutions. Internationally, he has been involved in development finance and microfinance work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2019, the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) awarded Mr. Swack the 2019 Ned Gramlich Lifetime Achievement Award for Responsible Finance—the community development finance institution (CDFI) industry’s highest individual honor. In 2021 he was appointed by President Joseph Biden to serve on the Community Development Advisory Board to advise the Director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund on policies regarding the activities of the CDFI Fund. Mr. Swack has published in the areas of economic development and development finance. He received his doctorate degree from Columbia University, his master’s degree from Harvard University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
