By Christina Travers, LISC Executive Vice President & CFO

LISC CFO Christina Travers is among the impact investing leaders who contributed commentaries to a new book, The Social Justice Investor, and joined a panel discussion at today’s book launch. In her essay, “Laying the Cash Tracks,” (reprinted here) she explains the evolution of LISC’s capital markets experience—noting how discouraging Wall Street conversations eventually led to transformative, community-focused investments.

By Christina Travers, LISC Executive Vice President & CFO

With the launch of the new book, The Social Justice Investor, LISC’s CFO Christina Travers, one of the book’s contributors, reflects on the ways that CDFIs have tapped the capital markets to deepen their impact—working to upend lingering misconceptions among some investors. “Whether we are financing affordable housing, small businesses, health, safety, climate resilience, racial equity or jobs, we see financial performance and local impact as part of the same whole.”

LISC has once more been named Emeritus Impact Manager for the ImpactAssets 50 (IA 50), a who’s-who of fund managers dedicated to creating positive social and environmental impact. The IA Emeritus category represents impact fund managers who have been on the IA 50 for at least five years. LISC is one of ten community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that were selected for this year’s IA 50, reflecting the critical role CDFIs continue to play to build more inclusive and equitable communities.

By Yvonne Nolan, Vice President of Charter School Financing

Income, race and geography persistently define the educational landscape—year after year, in every state, across both urban and rural communities. "No matter where families might live—no matter their backgrounds or incomes—public education should offer kids the opportunity to reach their full potential,” writes LISC’s Yvonne Nolan, in a new blog commemorating 20 years of investments through LISC’s charter school financing program. “We refuse to stand by and let crumbling buildings undermine student learning and perpetuate inequality,” she says.

LISC Twin Cities Celebrates $1 Billion in Investments in the Twin Cities

As it celebrates its 35th Anniversary, LISC Twin Cities announced another major milestone: $1 billion dollars of investments. Over three and a half decades, LISC Twin Cities has channeled all of this capital into transformative organizations and projects, strengthened community development infrastructure and changed systems that create and perpetuate inequality of opportunity.

By Elise Balboni, Kathleen Keefe & Anna Smukowski

LISC and Enterprise Community Partners have released a joint white paper that catalogs how CDFIs have engaged with the capital markets in recent years. In an accompanying blog, the authors explain why this data is so critical, as economic pressure affects the availability and cost of capital for high-impact community development efforts. "The goal is to help impact investors identify how and where they might put their capital to work and what expectations they should have for performance,” they write.