Staff Profile
Debra Schwartz
Director, Program-Related Investments
Contact - dschwartz@macfound.org
Debra D. Schwartz is Director of Program-related Investments (PRIs) for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Debra oversees the Foundation's $300-million PRI portfolio of below-market loans and investments which it uses principally to support economic development and affordable housing organizations in the U.S. She also co-leads the Foundation's $150-million national initiative, Window of Opportunity: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing.
Before joining MacArthur in 1995, Schwartz was chief financial officer for a nonprofit in Chicago and an investment banker at John Nuveen & Co. where she helped originate over $1 billion in tax-exempt bonds for municipalities and health care institutions. Schwartz is a past presidential appointee to the United States Treasury Department Community Development Advisory Board and a founding member of the PRI Makers Network national steering committee. She is a Social Enterprise Fellow at the Yale School of Management and a Lecturer at the University of Chicago where she teaches a new undergraduate course, "The Business of Nonprofits and the Evolving Social Sector."
Schwartz graduated from Yale University summa cum laude and received a Master's degree in finance and nonprofit management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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