Michael T. Pugh, LISC’s president and CEO, touched base with Next City about the path that brought him to LISC, the critical need for affordable housing creation, and the potentials of AI in creating economic mobility, especially for unbanked Americans.

In a wide-ranging interview with Denver Fredericks, host of the Business of Giving podcast, LISC CEO Michael T. Pugh describes the pillars of LISC's work investing in communities and what's on the horizon for the CDFI under his leadership. "[We] can be a real catalyst for economic development in communities," says Pugh. "And frankly the best is yet to come."

By Jacqueline Waggoner, Enterprise Community Partners and Tahirih Ziegler, LISC

California’s recently formed Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program (FIHPP) is poised to fund nonprofit housing groups to buy rental properties in or at risk of foreclosure and quickly convert them to long-term affordable housing. Now, FIHPP is hanging in the legislative balance. LISC’s Tahirih Zigler and Enterprise Community Partners’ Jacqueline Waggoner weigh in on the imperative of safeguarding the program to help spare many Californians from the preventable tragedies of displacement and homelessness.

Natavia lives in the 800 square-foot family house her grandmother bought on the east side of Jacksonville, Florida almost 80 years ago. Natavia is the third generation to call the property home. “I value the house for the memories,” she said. “I grew up spending the summers with my grandma, hearing the stories of her walking to work way on the other side of town, just to have a home.”

In naming Michael Pugh a leader in finance, Crain's NY noted his leadership of LISC, a CDFI that has invested $30 billion in underserved communities, as well as his accomplishments in establishing a loan fund leveraging alternative data and cultivating the next generation of financial leaders at HBCUs.

Talking Financial Stability With LISC CEO Michael T. Pugh

In a wide-ranging radio interview with Audacy's On the Block 94.7, LISC CEO Michael T. Pugh unpacks the ways CDFIs, from the most local to the largest, are so well poised to support financial mobility. He also praises the role of good financial advice, and forecasts how AI can create alternative methods for building credit.