Raymond Lanza-Weil has joined the Vermont Community Loan Fund (VCLF), a nonprofit, mission-driven alternative lender and Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), as Director of Business Programs. Lanza-Weil comes to the Loan Fund with extensive experience in both the nonprofit and commercial lending sectors.
Getting his start underwriting consumer loans at a community bank in California, Lanza-Weil spent a decade underwriting business loans for US Bank in Portland, Oregon before transitioning to nonprofits.
Lanza-Weil says he knew little about CDFIs when a colleague introduced the subject. The Cascadia Revolving Fund, a highly-respected CDFI, was expanding its presence from Seattle into nearby Portland, Oregon.
“I realized I wanted to do something that would more directly benefit people,” he recalls. Lanza-Weil signed on with Cascadia as Manager of its Oregon operation, opening the new Portland office, and helping build the businesses of its borrowers. At Cascadia, he worked with borrowers like Glass Alchemy, a start-up wholesale art glass manufacturer in 2000 that received the SBA’s Small Business Person of the Year award for Oregon in 2008. Today, the organization’s management has transitioned to the next generation and they’re still thriving.
He followed up with a management position at a State of Maryland government loan program and then worked at the CDFI national trade organization, Opportunity Finance Network, as a senior analyst at its spin-off evaluation agency CARS (now Aeris). While at CARS, Lanza-Weil was assigned to audit VCLF for its mission and financial performance, issuing a report to existing and prospective borrowers.
“I kept my finger on the pulse of CDFIs,” says Lanza-Weil, adding that he’d hoped to return to a position exactly like the one he’s now filled. “At a bank, I wasn’t close enough to impact. I was sitting on the other side of the table, helping borrowers. I’d rather be on the same side of the table – which I am, at VCLF,” he says. He’ll split his time between VCLF’s Montpelier office and southern Vermont.
Lanza- Weil and his wife Carmela live just across the Vermont state line in Massachusetts with their distinguished black lab mix, Pancho Contreras (pictured). They have two grown daughters, one son-in-law and a new baby grandson, Isaac.
The Vermont Community Loan Fund (VCLF) is a flexible, creative, mission-driven lender that creates opportunities leading to healthy communities and financial stability for all Vermonters. They lend to local businesses, community organizations & nonprofits, early care & education programs and developers of affordable housing who can’t access the capital they need from traditional lenders. Since 1987, VCLF has lent over $90 million to create or preserve jobs for 5,200 Vermonters, build or rehabilitate affordable homes for 4,000 Vermonters, seniors and families, create or preserve quality care for 3,700 children and their families and support community organizations providing essential services to hundreds of thousands of Vermonters.