Chief Financial and Risk Officer – Allen Smith

Allen Smith is the Chief Financial and Risk Officer and serves on the Investment Committee. With over twenty-five years of broad finance experience, Mr. Smith has worked at Citibank, UBS and Chemical (JP Morgan Chase) in America, Germany and Japan. He has held several senior management positions in the Markets Division as well as the Corporate Finance and Project Finance divisions specializing in financing of mid-market firms. After leaving banking, Mr. Smith moved into the hedge fund sector serving as Chief Risk Officer and Chief Operating Officer. More recently,  Mr. Smith was Managing Director at Edrich, LLC providing financial advisory to small and mid-cap firms seeking funding from private equity and venture capital firms. After Edrich, he served as Director, Finance & Operations for a nonprofit that teaches coding in underserved high schools in New York City and California. Mr. Smith’s community involvement includes consulting at a low-income credit union in Newark, NJ and successfully soliciting grant funding and obtaining the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) designation.  

He received a BS degree from the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and a MBA degree from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business.

Chief Business Development Officer –
Grace Fernandez

Grace is the Chief Business Development Officer responsible for identifying investment opportunities in the targeted zones as  well as strategic investors.  With nearly 20 years of marketing, business development and business finance in banking, entertainment and community development, she has extensive relationships throughout New Jersey and with the United Nations and international investor community.