Calvert Foundation CEO and President Shari Berenbach will resign from the lead post she has held at the non-profit organization for nearly 14 years. Current Executive VP and Chief Lending Officer Lisa Hall will replace her in the interim.
In an announcement today, Berenbach stated that she is leaving the Bethesda, Md.-based group to lead microenterprise development at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a Washington, D.C.-based agency that extends assistance to needy countries.
“I know that I am leaving Calvert Foundation in a position of strength, and handing the reigns over to capable leaders who will take it to the next level,” Berenbach said in her comments.
Until Calvert’s Board of Directors’ selects a permanent replacement, Hall, which joined back in 2005 from the American Communities Fund where she served as a chief credit officer, will assume lead duties in the meantime, the Aug. 11 press release said.
During her time at the Foundation, Berenbach was said to have “helped to popularize impact investing,” where she has been able to increase assets from $5 million to more than $500 million, and staff by more than twenty times to 42.
The foundation, which was first incorporated in September 1988, aims to offer opportunity to investors to “achieve financial returns while empowering people living in low-income communities.”
Currently, Calvert has over $500 million in assets under management. Its portfolio includes a diversified mix of allocations to affordable housing, microfinance, Fair Trade coffee, small business development, charter schools, daycare centers and rehabilitation clinics.
