We are excited to introduce a new feature in our weekly Monday Morning Report newsletter to showcase our highest-level members. Leaders You Should Know highlights community leaders who are making a notable impact in the Nashville region.
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Tell us about yourself?
Clint Gwin is the President and CEO of Pathway Lending, a U.S. Treasury Department-certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) founded in 1999 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, serving Tennessee and Alabama. Pathway Lending’s primary focus is on providing financing and capacity building to low-income community businesses, low-income entrepreneurs, African American entrepreneurs, and women- and veteran-owned businesses. Pathway also has extensive lending focused on affordable multi-family housing development and preservation, along with commercial and industrial energy efficiency and renewable financing. In the areas of entrepreneurial education and capacity building, Pathway Lending operates a Women’s Business Center as well as an SBA Veteran Business Outreach Center.
Mr. Gwin assumed leadership of Pathway Lending in May of 2003, has grown the organization’s balance sheet from $3MM to $320MM during his tenure, and is recognized for his work in creating public-private partnerships with the State of Tennessee and the Tennessee Bankers Association. To date, Pathway has originated more than $500MM in lending to underserved small businesses and for affordable housing and energy efficiency. Pathway Lending regularly provides education and coaching services to more than 1,200 entrepreneurs annually. Clint also leads Pathway Lending’s Federal New Markets Tax Credit Initiative, which has received $115M of NMTC Allocations over the last three years to facilitate the creation and expansion of rural manufacturing facilities and community health facilities through financing provided by NMTC.
Mr. Gwin has served nationally on several boards, including his Presidential appointment September 15, 2017, to serve a four-year term on the U. S. Treasury Department’s Community Development Fund Advisory Board. In 2018, Clint was appointed to serve on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board. He has also served on the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council from 2011 – 2013. Clint is founding board member and chair of Appalachian Community Capital, an intermediary CDFI serving Appalachia’s small business CDFIs and has served on the board of an affordable housing CDFI. Clint began his career with the FDIC. He is a graduate of Centenary College of Louisiana and received his Masters from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
Tell us about your business/industry?
The Community Development Financial Institution was created 30 years ago this year by Congress by the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. The Act created the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund at the U.S. Treasury Department. The purpose of the CDFI Fund is to provide investments in and support to Certified CDFIs to support the equitable flow of capital to historically underserved and low-income communities and historically disadvantaged populations.
Pathway Lending is a 501(c)3 that has three primary focus areas for its lending and educational programs. The primary lending and educational activities of Pathway Lending focus on underserved and under resourced small businesses and entrepreneurs. Through our education and capacity-building programs, we help entrepreneurs obtain the knowledge and skills needed to successfully launch and scale their businesses. This portion of Pathway Lending’s activities dates back to its founding in 1999 as a microlender providing loans of up to $25,000 to small businesses to launch and scale.
Since its inception, Pathway has provided funding to 1,200 underserved small businesses, totaling more than $325 million. The second focus area for Pathway is financing the creation and preservation of affordable multi-family housing. This program began in partnership with the Tennessee Bankers Association to increase the available capital to support the creation and preservation of affordable multi-family housing across Tennessee. The third focus area for Pathway Lending began in 2010, when the State of Tennessee, Tennessee Valley Authority and Pathway Lending collaborated to create a loan program to accelerate the implementation of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy. This program generates $8 million in energy savings annually. Pathway Lending is excited to be celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2024.
As an industry, the CDFI industry is relatively young, celebrating its 30th year in 2024; however, the roots of the industry date back to the civil rights movement and groups of citizens aggregating funds to support each other’s businesses and home purchases. There are currently about 1,400 certified CDFIs. CDFIs typically fall into four categories. The largest segment is Loan Funds (40%), like Pathway Lending that aggregate capital from financial institutions, philanthropy, religious organizations and corporations. The second largest segment is Credit Unions (38%) followed by Banks (17%) and finally Venture Funds (5%). All CDFIs have to have a mission of community development through the provision of loans and other financial products to identified low-income communities and underserved populations. Specifically, CDFIs must do at least 60% of their lending activities to these low-income targeted geographies and populations.
What should we know about you?
I have a strong desire to help people that comes from my family, and I am fortunate to work with talented people with the same desire.
How did you get to your current position?
I joined Pathway Lending in 2002 as Managing Director of Small Business Lending in May of 2003, the founding CEO resigned and the board appointed me.
What value do you see in Chamber involvement?
Pathway Lending and the Chamber have very similar missions to support small businesses, so for Pathway Lending this alignment furthers our mission and expands our reach.
What do you enjoy most about being a leader?
Leading Pathway Lending is both a huge responsibility and an honor. As a leader, you must be constantly evolving and learning. I am excited to learn and understand how new information can impact how we move forward as an organization and how I can motivate our team to use our mission of providing educational services and lending solutions that support the development, growth, and preservation of underserved small businesses, affordable housing, and sustainable communities. Along with learning and evolving, making sure our team and stakeholders fully understand our impacts and sharing Pathway’s and our client’s stories is what we do it all for.
What makes Nashville a great place to do business?
Nashville is a great place to do business because of the people. When I first came to Nashville, I moved here without knowing a single person. What makes Nashville great is the willingness of people to take an interest in you, what you are doing, and what you want to do. When I joined Pathway Lending, it was amazing how people would be willing to meet with me to hear what we were trying to build. People regularly offered introductions to others who might be interested in Pathway Lending and our mission. We have the same philosophy at Pathway: we open our doors to all, listen to their story and what they want to do, and assemble the resources they need to accomplish their goals.
What is the future of AI and new digital technologies in your industry?
The CDFI industry is at a major inflection point. Our industry is much like the banking industry; it is composed of many small local participants that are doing really good work but struggling to scale to meet the demand for capital in underserved markets. A lack of resources to invest in new technologies has kept many CDFIs from reaching their potential. The use case for AI in the work CDFIs do is tremendous. In short, AI brings tools and knowledge that have long been out of reach to under-resourced CDFIs. What it means is that we have to take the large amounts of data we have, really understand it, and use it to better meet the needs of underserved communities. Better understanding of risk and impact and how to maximize impact. It will allow mission focused CDFI to have the same data intelligence that the largest organizations possess. Putting this type of knowledge in the hands of highly talented and motivated mission focused teams has the potential to dramatically improve outcomes in low-income and under-resourced communities.
What is a hard-earned lesson that you’ve learned?
As I tell every new member of our team, “What we do is hard, but you will find it is very rewarding.” I do not tell our team members this just to tell them, but I tell them this because I personally know it. As with any business, there are many steps forward and, more often then not, many more steps backward. Developing a strategy and continuously iterating is what it takes to accomplish the goals. This has been the lesson I have learned over the years.
The specific, hard-earned lesson I learned comes from a program we were developing with some partners. After nearly three years of “No, we cannot do that” and iterating the program and rebutting all the reasons why it will not work, you finally get to the finish line and you receive the greatest compliment of all which is, “You are the most persistent person I have ever dealt with.” This lesson of being consistent, adaptive and persistent can result in achieving your goals.
