Alliance Video Series – CEO Conversations: Moving Beyond the Status Quo

CDC Small Business CEO Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO Ellis Carr

Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org

CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.

We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.

Tune in to the last video of our “CEO Conversations” series, “Moving Beyond the Status Quo.” Listen to CDC Small Business Finance’s CEO, Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr discuss how the alliance will disrupt and to call to question the current operating practices to bring change to communities.

Watch the video, or read the transcript below to hear Kurt and Ellis’ discussion. You can also watch the whole video series here.

In the sixth and final video of our CEO Conversations video series featuring CDC Small Business Finance CEO Kurt Chillcot and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr, we discuss how the alliance will disrupt and to call to question the current operating practices to bring change to communities.

ELLIS:

As two organizations that are led by folks who are dreamers, we have no shortage of ideas around ways that we can support the community.

The wonderful thing about working in this sector is that we are not alone. The challenge for all of us is that we all are constrained by limited resources.

The alliance allows the opportunity for us to test new and innovative ideas and share those experiences in ways that we have not. We have both infrastructure and potentially capital resources that can be partnered with or placed with various organizations around the country.

I’m really excited about starting that journey, specifically in the DMV area and Detroit – two places where Capital Impact has invested significant time and resources.

Collectively with CDC Small Business Finance, LA is an area that is close to both of our hearts, that we hope we can help accelerate the pace of change that is needed in that community as well.

KURT:

Ellis, that’s an important point about this alliance and coming together. We hope that it is an inspiration to others to collaborate with us as well as with local CDFIs to try to make the system actually work better.

You and I both feel if we come out of this current situation that we’re in, this pandemic and the racial inequity that has been highlighted as a result of the pandemic and the civil unrest, if we’re still doing things the way we did before, what a loss of opportunity.

Interesting aspects of this crisis is the opportunity that is being generated as a result of it. This opportunity is potentially an accelerator to the work that we want to do together.

ELLIS:

I completely agree. The pandemic has highlighted both the challenges and the opportunities.

I would say that CDFIs have been discussed in more venues than I can ever remember in my term in the CDFI sector.

I think that creates a significant opportunity for us. That significant opportunity will be constrained by the lack of a distribution platform that could be needed.

The alliance provides an opportunity to meet that need and the demand that will come as a result of both the continued awakening of this country to the challenges and the opportunities that exist within it.

KURT:

Ellis we’ve been working together on this for almost a year now. I think both you and I are anxious to start the work, just to stop talking about it and to start doing it.

I couldn’t be more excited about that prospect. The work that we’re looking to do in Detroit and the DMV area, in Los Angeles, is really going to start to demonstrate what we’ve been talking about here today.

It will start to show real tangible results on the ground for communities, for residents, and for small businesses in those communities, that we believe together we can really make a difference for.

That is the ultimate test. Talk is cheap, and as we start to work together, we want to demonstrate how this can really change the system, disrupt the system, and provide solutions at scale that really haven’t been done before.

ELLIS:

That’s exactly right. I think times like we’re in right now, given the pandemic and the civil unrest, highlight the need and the desire to really disrupt and to call to question the current operating practices and the status quo.

As we all are taking stock of doing that both personally and professionally, we really have to look to this alliance as a way to really disrupt the current status quo.

Again, putting communities first coupled with ensuring agency with the communities, is what continues to excite me.

To your point, I’m all about the work. I want to get started. As we say, and have adopted over this last year, onward.