CITI Leadership Program for Opportunity Finance

Overview

The Citi Leadership Program for Opportunity Finance, offered by OFN with generous support from the Citi Foundation, was a unique and innovative leadership program for CDFIs. Developed by CDFIs for CDFIs, the program supported talent that could lead transformational change, ensure strong leadership at all levels of the industry, and promote leaders that represented the diverse communities that CDFIs serve.

The opportunity finance industry emerged from the Great Recession stronger and fielding more opportunities than ever. But the industry needed more leaders to leverage these and future opportunities. The Citi Leadership Program for Opportunity Finance was an industry-wide talent development program designed to help new leaders, capitalize on the experience of current leaders, and build a leadership that reflected the diverse communities that CDFIs serve.

How It Worked

Over a period of 11 months, a select group of executive, mid-career, and emerging leaders experienced the program’s unique curriculum. Developed and delivered by OFN and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the curriculum offered a powerful combination of leadership development experiences built around four key elements:

• Transformational leadership frameworks and tools
• Applying transformational leadership to the opportunity finance industry
• Understanding leadership and management
• Building effective teams to lead transformational change

Through four in-person gatherings (in January, April, and June in Philadelphia, and November at the 2015 OFN Conference in Detroit) and regular conference calls, participants learned from program instructors, their fellow Citi leaders, and their own self-reflection.