Social entrepreneur and banker Gryzwinski to speak

A man who has bucked conventional wisdom in the banking industry for 35 years will be featured in the second annual Lecture Series on Social Entrepreneurship. On Wednesday, April 2, Ron Gryzwinski, co-founder of Chicago’s ShoreBank Corp., will talk about how banks can combine a social mission with profitability.

The event, co-sponsored by the Farmer School of Business and Miami’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship, takes place at 4 p.m. in Laws 113. All are welcome.

Gryzwinski and three others founded ShoreBank in 1973 to fight the illegal practice of “redlining” (discrimination on the basis of race and income) in Chicago’s South Shore area. It was the nation’s first community development bank; in the 35 years since, ShoreBank has grown into one of the most successful community development and microfinance institutions in the country, with assets of $1.9 billion.

ShoreBank has established branches in other cities and has helped finance the purchase and renovation of 49,000 affordable residences, and issues nearly $900 million in loans to citizens in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland between 2001 and 2006. In 2000, it expanded its focus to include environmental issues, believing that communities cannot achieve true prosperity without also attaining environmental well-being.

Gryzwinski helped design and incorporate the Grameen Bank, a micro-loan institution in Bangladesh, as well as the Southern Development Bancorporation, a community development bank serving rural Arkansas. He currently works with those two banks as well as with the BRAC in Bangladesh, an organization that promotes sustainable economic development; XacBank in Mongolia, the Aga Khan Foundation in Pakistan, and the Ashoka Global Academy in India.

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