Meet the New Executives Who Will Help OFN Scale Impact and Shape the Future
OFN’s four new executives share their perspectives on why this was the moment to join the organization and their vision for the path ahead.
Read time: 5 minutes
Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) has entered a period of growth spurred by an influx of capital and visibility to CDFIs. Part of that growth includes an escalation in hiring. We are excited to welcome four new executives this year to strengthen our leadership and help scale the organization and industry.
Our newest executives joined us for a Q&A to share insights on joining OFN at this moment and their vision for the path ahead.
Jessel Amin, Tony Berkley, Kevin Fryatt, and Brendon Miller discuss how their diverse experiences and shared commitment to OFN’s mission will shape the organization and drive impact in communities across the country.
What excites you about joining OFN at this moment?
Jessel Amin, Chief Investment Officer: I am humbled by the opportunity to serve the community development finance industry at such a critical moment in the industry’s history. Our collective future rests on our ability to tackle the climate crisis. At OFN, we have the immense responsibility of facilitating a just energy transition.
Our work will mobilize a broad set of stakeholders — investors, policymakers, community development practitioners, and climate activists — to elevate community-driven strategies to expand health, wealth, and opportunity in historically disinvested communities. I am grateful to be part of this work.
Tony Berkley, Chief Development Officer: This is such an exciting moment to join OFN because it’s full of opportunities. First is the opportunity to scale the industry. CDFIs have begun to push the boundaries on what is considered scale in the sector, especially now with the support from the EPA for sustainable financing.
The second is the opportunity to achieve real impact through big strategies. There’s a real amount of challenge in deploying advanced sustainability and climate technologies to get them to realize their full impact, but that is what we are tasked with. These are exciting challenges that present unique opportunities for our sector.
Kevin Fryatt, Chief Operations Officer: The industry is at an inflection point of growth, change, technology adoption, and innovation. The CDFI business model should look a lot different 5-10 years from now than it looks today. As someone who has gone through a very similar period in the international microfinance sector, I am excited to be a part of OFN at such an important time in our industry, where I can lend my experience to help drive the growth and resilience of the sector in the U.S.
Brendon Miller, Chief of Staff and Head of Communications: What’s exciting is that our organization and our industry are made for this moment – standing on the shoulders of forty years of visionaries and trailblazers and kindred spirits who have been committed to this work. The work they did to position us and our industry for where we are right now is reflected in the magnitude of what’s possible, from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to building infrastructure for scale across our industry. It’s an incredibly important time.
During this time of organizational and industry growth, what is needed to help OFN steer the industry through change?
Kevin Fryatt, Chief Operations Officer: The period that our industry is in right now, we have seen before in many adjacent sectors and industries, and there are so many lessons to be gleaned from those to inform the trajectory of the maturation and growth of our sector. OFN doesn’t need to recreate the wheel or think through these things in isolation.
OFN needs to continue to look outside its own experiences — to look into other pockets of the world and draw in the experience of others to help fast-track our path and shape the future of the sector. The industry is experiencing an unprecedented amount of capital and visibility at this moment. Where do we need to invest and partner to sustain this growth?
Tony Berkley, Chief Development Officer: It starts with talent. Sustaining innovative, pioneering work almost always starts with talent, commitment, purpose, and vision. But having the right skills to get the work done is imperative, so I would say first investing in talent, and there’s a lot of it in this sector.
The second thing is to embrace software and technology. AI has grown to a level where it’s helpful at every level of finance, so as a sector, we need to increase our investment in technology to help us become more efficient, analyze risks, better manage large portfolios, empower our talent, tell our story, and better capture data.
How does OFN need to show up as an organization during this time?
Brendon Miller, Chief of Staff and Head of Communications: We need to think and act big, with vision and ambition that meet the moment. When we talk to partners, they’re looking to us to develop, co-create, and execute solutions that are really going to transform our communities. OFN has always been good at mobilizing capital for CDFIs, and we’ll continue to be good at that, but the moment calls for us to go bigger — to put in place the infrastructure solutions, systems, and structures that set up our industry for scale.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth as we look to the future for OFN and the industry?
Jessel Amin, Chief Investment Officer: As a steward of OFN’s mission to align capital and justice, I am eager to develop the landscape for CDFIs in the capital markets. I am looking forward to working with the team to develop creative capital solutions that meet the evolving needs of the OFN membership and help mobilize private capital to build a more just and sustainable economy.
Want to learn more about where our organization is headed in the year ahead and how you can get involved?
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