Michael Swack 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 Financial Innovations Roundtable (in collaboration with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve). He has over thirty-five years of experience in the fields of economic development, finance, and development banking.
Michael 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 seventeen 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 Michael the 2019 Ned Gramlich Lifetime Achievement Award for Responsible Finance—the community development finance institution (CDFI) industry’s highest individual honor. In 2021 Michael was appointed by President Biden to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Advisory Board
Michael 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.
Education
• Ph.D., Education, Columbia University
• MCRP., City/UrbanCommunityRegionlPlan, Harvard University
• B.A., Political Science, University of Wisconsin
Courses Taught
• DPP 901: Integrative Approaches
• DPP 902: Economic Analysis
• DPP 951: Nuts and Bolts of Microfinance
• DPP 958: Financing Development
• DPP 961: Community Development Finance
• DPP 990: Independent Study
• DPP/ECON 951/633: Nuts and Bolts of Microfinance
• DPP/ECON 951/698: Nuts and Bolts of Microfinance
• DPP/ECON 960/698: Social Enterprise
• ECON 633: Microfinance
• ECON 695: Independent Study
• ECON 698: Top/Microfinance
Selected Publications
Swack, M. and Charles Tansey, The Potential Role For CDFIs in the Opportunity Zones of the Investing in Opportunities Act (2020), Carsey School, University of New Hampshire.
Swack, M. and Eric Hangen. Scaling U.S. Community Investing: The Investor-Product Interface (2016). Global Impact Investment Network.
Swack, M., Eric Hangen and Jack Northrup. CDFIs Stepping into the Breach: An Impact Evaluation (2015). United States Department of Treasury.
Swack, M., Jack Northrup and Eric Hangen. CDFI Industry Analysis (2012). CDFI Fund and Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire. A financial and social impact analysis of community development financial institutions.
Tansey Charles and Swack, M. (2010) Community Development Financial Institutions, Capital Markets and Organizational Credit Risk with Charles Tansey, Michael Tansey and Vicki Stein. Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.
