2024 Exemplary Partner: Wells Fargo’s partnership with LISC Phoenix helps build a more inclusive economic future

10.22.2024 — LISC Storiese-Blasts

Is it nature or nurture?

It’s not a question you’d expect to explore when trying to get to the heart of what makes the long, deep relationship between Wells Fargo and LISC Phoenix so special. But when you see what partnership does to help individuals and neighborhoods, when you know the legacy of the leaders guiding the community development work, the answer to the nature/nurture question is not surprising.

It’s both.

For more than three decades at the national and local levels, Wells Fargo has partnered with LISC on an imperative to help neighborhoods that have been neglected, abandoned or otherwise denied access to opportunity. That shared mission has activated programs like Financial Opportunity Centers, which offer clients a range of services to achieve financial health, and the Open for Business Fund, which provides capital, technical support, and develop long-term resiliency programs for vulnerable small businesses. The extraordinary working relationship fortifies households and boosts small business development that help establish long-overdue foundations generational wealth.

We are thrilled to honor Wells Fargo as the LISC Phoenix 2024 exemplary partner for its long history of providing leadership and critical financial and technical support in building inclusive community and economic development systems.

The LISC Phoenix-Wells Fargo relationship is the natural result of a nonprofit and funder combining forces to achieve shared community-based goals. But the partnership to fortify the community development infrastructure in metro Phoenix also has been nurtured in ways that inform the work of LISC Phoenix and Wells Fargo as individual organizations.

Wells Fargo’s partnership with LISC Phoenix is part of the body and soul of the community development financial institution. Since the earliest years of LISC Phoenix, Wells Fargo has had a representative on the Local Advisory Committee, which puts several sectors at the table of community development discussions, provides guidance and support to the local program’s leadership and advocates for LISC Phoenix in the community. Currently, there are two Wells Fargo representatives on the LAC: Katie Campana, vice president, Lead Community Impact and Sustainability Specialist, and Lisa Price, vice president, Lead Financial Health Philanthropy.

“Over the decades, it’s the people at Wells Fargo that made a real impact,” Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC Phoenix, said. “Leaders like Carolyn Mitchell, Jeff Gauvin, and Victor Burrola — and now Lisa Price and Katie Campana — have been champions of our work, bringing thought leadership and resources to get projects off the ground.”

Price has been an LAC member since 2013, when she began her career at Wells Fargo. She is near the end of her third consecutive year as LAC chairperson, but she will continue as a committee member.

“It really is remarkable how similar our shared visions are,” Price said. “Our focuses within Wells Fargo are very similar to the focuses of LISC and that’s really fostered a great collaboration, not only locally here through LISC Phoenix, but also at the national level. I have the honor of getting to see both.”

The nature/nurture question could be asked about Price’s career arc, too. The Phoenix native comes to the work of philanthropy and community development with historic knowledge of the neighborhoods LISC Phoenix serves.

Price had an early initiation into real-world implications of community growth and development. She was raised by a mother who worked in community development and a father who owned a commercial real estate appraisal business. As a teen, she would help her dad do his work in the field.

After earning her degree at Arizona State University, she landed a job managing community programs for a housing developer. That community engagement work prepared her for roles in the community development division of the city of Phoenix Neighborhood Services Department.

“Growing up and seeing how the city has expanded and grown, the different communities that popped up, having that history, wanting to see everybody on that same level playing field is really something we’re all striving for,” Price said.

Knowledge flows two ways. Not only does Price bring what she knows to the LAC, her work with LISC Phoenix also informs strategic initiatives at Wells Fargo.

“I’ve been able to really speak to the importance of LISC as an organization within local communities and the work they do and achieve that Wells Fargo cannot do on its own,” Price said.

In her role as a program manager at the national level, Price advocated for LISC involvement when Wells Fargo initiated a focus on financial coaching in 2018.

“Because of my work with LISC Phoenix and the LAC, I was able to say, you know, we really do need to have LISC at the table and invite them to submit an RFP for this opportunity and to talk about the work that they’re doing through the Financial Opportunity Centers,” Price said. “That’s where our support at the national level for the FOC network began, and we’ve been able to continue that.”

Price said she appreciates the relationships that come only with association with LISC Phoenix and its penchant for nurturing collaboration.

“It provides you that bird’s eye view of all the different activities that are happening within the community,” Price said of her LAC work. “LISC Phoenix is really at the center of much of that. And they are that bridge, that connector within local government, communities, funders, nonprofits. They have those relationships; they have that network and are able to connect the dots and all the resources.”

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