Awarepreneurs interview - Elyse Cherry

Hi, and welcome to Awarepreneurs, the world's longest-running social entrepreneur podcast. I'm Paul Zelizer, your host. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests help more social entrepreneurs. Thank you so much. Today our guest is Elise Jarrett, and our topic is economic development leading through uncertain times. Elyse Cherry has served as the CEO of BlueHub Capital since 1997. Under Cherry's leadership, BlueHub has invested over $3.2 billion, leveraged an additional $16.1 billion, and built a national tax credit practice to finance affordable housing, health centers, schools, and other community facilities, create jobs, benchmark and drive down energy and utility costs. Elise, thanks for doing that great work and thanks for being here on Awarepreneurs.

Well, thanks very much, Paul. We very much appreciate your interest in this field and your willingness to make it available to your viewers, or actually listeners, I guess.

Listeners, yeah. So Elise, this whole idea, going back to the beginning, take us back to what brought you into community finance and economic development in the first place.

Well, that's a long time ago. We have to go back to 1985. I was a young associate at my law firm, then known known as Hale and Dorr, now Wilmer Hale. And I was in the real estate finance and development area. And a group of friends came to me and said, there's this new thing emerging called community development loan funds, and we want you to be a part of it. And the idea really was that if we could take downtown expertise with respect to capital and development and zoning and so forth and combine that with community values, that we could actually assist communities and individuals in restoring their neighborhoods. And at the time, local neighborhoods were suffering from what we then called gentrification, meaning that people could no longer afford to live there, were having to move out, and home prices were going up, and richer folks were coming in. And, you know, I wasn't so sure at the time that it actually would work.

And my friend said, you're the only one with the expertise since you're the real estate lawyer and we're your friends. So that was a pretty compelling argument. And What I said was, okay, but then this has to be a success. This can't be one of those, oh, we gave it a good try things, right? We really have to work at this and we have to make it grow, right? We can't just be a small marginal organization. And everybody agreed. So we began.

And was that— I know you're in Boston now. Was that in the Boston area when you started?

Yes, it was. And in fact, we started what we then called Boston Community Loan Fund in Boston's neighborhoods. Alone. We had $3,500 from the Old South Church meetinghouse. And I sometimes say not enough gray hair to know that you couldn't do anything with $3,500. So we just began. And over the years, we grew and grew and grew. By 1997, when I actually came in to lead the organization full-time, I had been on the board ahead of that and chairing the board and so forth.

We were at about $30 million of lending. And now, as you indicated earlier, between the funds that we've put out, the funds that our partners have put out, we're approaching $20 billion. We've also moved from being a single business line to multiple business lines, and we've moved from Boston to being a national economic development organization. I think we are currently functioning in 46 states and the District of Columbia.

Wow, that's amazing. So one of the questions— we're a gritty social entrepreneur impact investor podcast— and one of the questions people always want me to ask is, take us back to your early capital. Like, How do you get started with the money that starts to get the flywheel effect going? So, here you are, not enough gray hair to know you shouldn't do this, right? And you start getting going. Where did that $3,500 was, you know, a small drop in the bucket, but where did you start to build that $20 million of capital that actually got you doing some more interesting projects?

Well, our first approach was really through the religious orders. We were at the very beginning of movement across the country that eventually became the CDFI industry. In fact, we helped write that legislation back, I guess, in the early 1990s maybe. And we went out and I have to say, many of the women's religious orders were supportive from the beginning. And that had a couple of significant impacts. For one thing, we now had capital, but the second piece was Nobody wanted to lose the nun's breakfast money, if you know what I mean, right? This was not money from someone who said, well, if I lose it, it doesn't matter. They were astounding in terms of putting their values and their money right in the same place without much regard to risk. And that was a partnership that we took extremely seriously.

And so we knew from the beginning we couldn't lose anybody's money. We also had individuals initially from the Boston area who invested in us and believed in us. And when the funds come in in that kind of personal way, it's really serious. It's not like you're sitting there saying, well, we got a grant from some giant foundation and oh well, right? Not that at all. I mean, these were individuals and they believed in us. And so we really needed to live up to that belief. Early on, the Boston Foundation joined us. We became part of their, there at the beginning set of grants.

And that was a really, really big piece. And then we began to reach out to financial institutions. And ask them to invest as debt holders. And because we are not a granting organization, we're a debt organization. So if we're out financing affordable housing or schools or daycare centers or whatever, we're providing debt, not grants. And the thing about debt is it has to get paid back because if it doesn't get paid back, there isn't any more debt. And so you can't really do anything else. And so pretty early on, right, really right from the beginning, we understood that we needed to function as an intermediary and that money and mission needed to be aligned.

And we couldn't simply say, as a mission matter, we're going to do this, even though when we look at the particulars, it doesn't really make any sense financially. We always had to be aligned on that.

Great answer, Elise, and really appreciate you unpacking that with us. Now, a CDFI organization is typically known for, at least as as I'm aware, making loans, making investments into communities that historically have had trouble getting the capital they need to doing helpful projects. Is that a fair summary?

Absolutely. Community development financial institutions, as our mission matter, we'd all describe it a hair differently, but essentially we exist to help build healthy communities where low-income people live and work. And the reason that's important is we don't just invest in lower-income or lower-wealth communities. We're not interested in in ghettoizing people and we're not interested in concentrating poverty. What we really want to do is participate in every community to the extent that they are helping to serve low wealth or low income populations. So as an example, we're perfectly happy to finance affordable housing in a wealthy community. We actually think economic integration is important for everyone, not just for lower wealth people, but really for everyone, for our entire nation. We are not better off in our view if people are segregated by either income or wealth.

Love that. So give us an example of some of your early projects, and then I want to bring us to where we are now in 2026 and some of the challenges that many organizations doing economic development work are facing. But like, what did that look like? You're talking about 1997 or early 2000. What kind of projects were you investing in?

Well, Maybe the thing to do is to talk first about Roxbury, because Roxbury is a neighborhood in Boston and we have been resident in that neighborhood basically for the last 40 years. And to now we have invested about almost $150 million into the community, but We started with small affordable housing loans into that community. That's what we did in the early days. And so if you want to think about how those loans translate to today, we've now done better than 3,000 units of housing in the Roxbury area. We've also done— and these are more recent investments— but we've also done $27 million to support workforce training and almost 800 secondary education seats. But we started small. Our first loan into the area was $30,000 for affordable housing.

What would you say, how have you learned how to make decisions, right? When you look at communities, I live in New Mexico, right? We have a lot of communities that are underserved and underrepresented. And, you know, the economy is changing, but historically has been a very anemic economy, right? Start going out to rural New Mexico and some of the tribal land. There's a lot of needs. A lot of needs, right? How have you all learned to prioritize and what, what goes into your algorithm when you're looking at where you're going to invest or where you're going to say, that's a great project, but we're just not going to be able to prioritize that?

Well, that's a great question. And I'll tell you, we're not at the algorithm stage yet. It really is all of our brains and experience looking at this. We are not capital constrained. So we've been able to actually raise enough funds so that if it's a good project and it underwrites properly, then we can do it. So that's the first thing I would say. But then the question is, what does it mean to be a good project and what does it mean to be able to underwrite it? And what we're really looking for are projects that at the end of the day will pencil, so to speak, right? That we often do pre-development lending and we do construction lending, but then at the end of the day, somebody has got to come in and take on that project as a debt-based project long-term. And they're not going to do that unless there's enough money in the project in order to support the debt.

So the first thing we're really looking at is in the long term, can this project stand on its own two feet with the assistance of federal subsidy to maybe state subsidy and maybe grants and a lot of support there. None of them are really market-based, but is the support available in order to make that project sustainable over time? The second thing is we know that we need good local partners. We cannot parachute into some community that we've never seen before and say, don't worry, we're here. That doesn't work. What, so what we tend to do is start out by going into the community, by getting to know people, by figuring out what the political situation is, what the economic situation is, who are the folks around who can really get things done as opposed to having great ideas, but maybe not being so good in execution. And then we tend to start with a smaller project so that we can figure it out. So, for example, I think about Memphis or a variety of communities in Texas where we went in, We met a ton of folks. We found a smaller project that really needed our help that we could see would be sustainable over time, that the right levels of subsidy and grant support were there.

We started with that, and if that worked, then we went on. And so our goal was to really assure that we had good partners on the ground, but also that we could be a good partner over time.

Beautiful. So I haven't had the honor, at least, to interview too many people who are at the head of an organization who have invested over $3.2 billion and leveraged another $16 billion, and you've been doing it for 40 years. And so I think our listeners kind of get a point of like, all right, street cred established, check, right? You've been doing this for a long time, and thank you for everything you've done. What we really wanted to focus— I want to go back to our topic. Our title today is Economic Development Leading Through Uncertain Times. Here we are in 2026, and there's a lot going on, right? And wanted to get your thoughts about, you know, you've seen ups and downs in 40 years. This is not the first complicated time in underserved communities. Tell us about some of the other times where it's been uncertain or there's been some challenges and how you navigated those.

Sure. Well, you're absolutely right, Paul. This is not our first rodeo. You know, I think we hit our first set of challenges back in 1992. And we were having a huge recession, particularly in the New England area. And in those days, we really were local. And it was particularly a real estate and bank-based recession. And we at that stage were often in a second lending position behind other standing, you know, institutional lenders.

And they were going bust. I remember Bank of New England, for example. And, you know, and there we were. And so we made a decision at that point that we were not going to lose any money and we were not going to lose any units of housing. As I look back, there may have been a touch of arrogance in that approach, but we actually made it work. I remember actually being dragged in by the treasurer of our biggest bank at the time who screamed at us for an hour that we were going to sell all that real estate and put those people on the street and take 30 cents on the dollar and, you know, give the money back to our investors. We said no, and we were not going to do it. And I then went home and wrote the 6-page letter that was going to go to the Boston Globe should they push it.

And so, and fortunately they didn't push it. We didn't need to send the letter to the Globe. But my point about all of this, I think, is when everybody's aligned, lending is easier. When folks are out of alignment, it's really a big problem. And you really have to stand for the communities that you're serving. It's a time that can require personal courage and that really causes people to understand whether that's available in their organization. One of the things we did back then, I don't know if your listeners will remember the Resolution Trust Corporation, the RTC. It was established in order to take on the assets of all of the savings and loans that were failing and also the larger banks that were failing.

They had an office about 30 miles from Boston down in Franklin. And we drove down there and talked to the person who was in charge and said, listen, I know you're trying to package a $200 million deal, which in those days was is a lot of money. And I know our loans are a tiny piece of that deal. And I know you're trying to sell them at 10 cents on the dollar. How about you take ours out and sell them back to us at 10 cents on the dollar? And honest to God, they did. And so that's how we got through. We took those loans back, we paid whatever that smaller amount of money was, and then we were able to pass the benefit on to our borrowers and continue to repay our investors. And that's what happened.

And so we never did lose a unit of housing and we never did lose anybody's money. And because it was so early, not that we were 7 years in as an organization at that point, it was so early as an organization and actually so early in our careers that it made an enormous impact on us and really helped us understand that we had what it took to grow. We had it not just with respect to relationships and expertise, but frankly, with respect to courage. Which turns out to be a really, really important organizational factor.

Especially in those inflection points, right?

Especially at those inflection points.

One of those things, Elise, before, kind of along those lines, when we were talking before we hit record, you talked about in those hard moments, in those places where you don't quite know what to do, one of the things you said was, we've always done it this way is no longer acceptable. That's kind of what was happening here, like, all right, we're hitting a moment. What we've done in the past isn't going to get us through. We're going to lose those housing units or lose the nuns' money or whoever, right? And we don't want to do that. So the first thing we want to do is pause and look at how we've been doing it that isn't going to work and acknowledge that going forward. I thought that was really wise, and I hadn't heard anybody say that before. Tell us a little bit more about that way Sure.

It's a bit of a joke around the organization, except of course it really isn't a joke. But I often say that the only answer to how come we're doing it this way, the only answer that's always wrong is the answer that says, because we've always done it that way. It's just not right. And so, what we've tried hard to do is to be forward-looking. We talk a lot about looking around the corner.

That was my next question, literally.

And we also talk a lot about context, right? I think I worry sometimes that this is more relevant in the nonprofit world, but I actually think it's just about humans generally. Humans tend to march, right? We've been doing something, we keep doing it. And sometimes, do you remember that old cartoon where I forget who it is, Wile E. Coyote or somebody runs along and all of a sudden he realizes he's run right off off the cliff.

On the Roadrunner.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's the challenge, right? And you just can't do that. If you do that, then you are going to fall off the cliff. So personally speaking, I spend a lot of time looking at context, looking around, trying to look around the corner. My email is actually filled with emails from the left, from the right, and from the center because I'm really, really trying to figure out What are the strands of thinking going on in the country? And how do we figure out where folks are going, where they're trying to get to? And how do we figure out how to get ahead of that? And I talk a lot about that in the organization because, of course, the most important thing is trying to get everybody else to think that way too.

Love that suggestion. I see in the impact space, not always, but more often, leaders in the impact space have a left-leaning politics and can get stuck in a bubble. And I really appreciate that wisdom, Elise, that, that can really lead to echo chambers, can lead to being surprised, to lead to being, you know, when funding has been cut. For instance, I'm the co-founder of NM Climate, and I had a— I'm similar to you, like I try to understand where different, you know, folks on the spectrum are thinking. And when funding started to be clawed back, I was the— I was a mentor for an accelerator called the Four Corners Clean Tech Accelerator. And I remember when they recruited me, I said to them, I said, hey, you guys are SBA funded. Like, are you okay money-wise? Because I knew climate was a dirty word in certain parts of the spectrum. They said, we're fine.

And then the money got clawed back, and 2 weeks into it, it all got shut down, or 3 weeks into it. A lot of my peers, when those kind of things were happening, were really— they were the coyote. They were so surprised and so upset, and I didn't like it. But I had more, a wider angle, and had more things going on in my business. It hurt. I was mad about it. I was looking forward to, you know, what was going to happen in the clean tech environment in, you know, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Those are the four corner states, building those relationships.

But in terms of what it meant for my business and how I was doing my career, I wasn't that coyote. I knew that that there was some challenges enough to even ask when they recruited me, are you going to be okay financially? And it turns out they weren't. And I was not happy about it, but I had some things in place, whereas some colleagues who didn't have those things in place, really, it hit them very, very, very hard.

Well, absolutely. And you, of course, were very wise to spread out. We actually share that. One of the things that I have said for 40 years is we cannot be dependent on a concentrated stream of capital because the second that stream concentrates, you really lose independence. And so what we need is as broad a set of streams of capital as we can possibly manage. So for example, we have relationships with virtually every money central bank and most regional banks and lots of local banks in addition to foundations organizations and individuals, because if somebody goes in a different direction, I don't want to be in a position of saying, you know, that the organization is getting dragged in that direction. We too were looking forward to climate money, and it's very sad that it's not there. And I think it's had a huge impact on lots of organizations.

But for us, again, it was a piece. It was not, you know, the major amount or an amount that was going to give us a problem in terms of continued viability. Success.

At least when you talk about it, you're so calm, right? Okay, this didn't happen, and we went over and drove down and bought back these. I imagine you felt stress. You know, you're pioneering, doing things in a field that now, 40 years into your journey, is somewhat well known in the impact space, but 40 years ago didn't exist in the way it does now. And you've had some moments like Deep breath. I can only imagine you've had some deep breath moments. Like, talk to— a lot of impact leaders right now are having challenges navigating their communities, navigating their companies, whether they're for-profit, you know, values-driven, or nonprofit, or hybrids, or B Corps. Like, a lot of folks who are listening to this podcast are having to navigate really hard challenges. And I'm curious if you have any leadership strategies under stress that really help you in those moments that You can get on this podcast and say, oh, this happened and they pulled this and we had to buy this and, you know, and they were threatening me and I was writing this letter to send to the Boston Globe.

So, you know, like just, just there's a calm about how you lead having seen so many challenges that I wonder if there's anything you could pass on to our impact social entrepreneurs who are leading their organizations or their companies.

Sure. What a great question. I think maybe the first thing that I would say is that careers, lives, organizations make much more sense when you look back as opposed to when you look forward. And it's important to keep that in mind, right? I mean, at whatever moment we're dealing with crisis, you just have no idea whether maybe this is the one that's really going to do the organization in. And it's only, you know, in retrospect that you can say, okay, we did this and we did this, We got through that. So I think that stress is just part of the game, right? It doesn't matter if you're for-profit or not-for-profit. I mean, I will say I thought I was building a downtown career. It is astonishing to me that in fact I have built a 40-year nonprofit career.

And I will say that leading this organization and having the faith of our board and staff for 4 decades now is one of the greatest honors of my life and hardly what I thought going forward. So I say all that because I think that stress is more easily managed if we're not attached to a rigid and specific predetermined outcome. Nothing is preordained. The world does not work that way. Life does not work that way. And so taking that perspective as things shift, I think, gives one more of an ability to say, well, I didn't see this coming. Let me take a step back and try and figure out how to deal with it. I also walk a lot.

And so I somehow have found over the years that thinking works better when the rest of my body is moving too. And so I will go out and take a walk around the reservoir and think and think and think and really sort of figure out what I think should happen or needs to happen. Sometimes I call up my staff and I raise new issues. They're all used to that. But you really have to provide yourself with enough time and space to actually think your way through. And the reason I'm emphasizing this, and I think it's so important. One of the things that can happen to senior people is that our calendars can get absolutely filled up with standing meetings, right? Everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody's trying to pursue their agenda, and you wind up without time to think.

And that is really devastating to an organization. And so I think one of the early things to do before the crisis happens is get a hold of the damn calendar and think about, you know, are those meetings really critical? Do they have to happen? And how are you you're going to find time to think about things in a relaxed way, right? And it doesn't have to be— thinking doesn't have to happen in a vacuum. As I say, for me, walking is probably the best way. Now that we're in the middle of a giant amount of snow out there, that doesn't work. And so, you know, I found myself sitting here yesterday de-seeding dried red peppers, and it was a great time to think, right? Because my hands were and my head was clear. But I think that's just critical. And if I had really one piece of advice for leaders, particularly for emerging leaders, find time. It doesn't mean that if you're not in a meeting, you're not being productive.

You have to find time.

Love that, Elise. I went for a ruck this morning, my weighted backpack, and off along the Bosque, along the Rio Grande, and that was my time. Time to clear my head. And it was cold out there, but it was so worth it. And the other thing I would add, just to highlight— I'll put a link to a podcast on it— but one of the most researched productivity strategies that I've ever seen is called timeboxing. And you're talking about timeboxing in many ways, just making sure that you don't just go from what other people's urgency claims in your calendar, but being really proactive. And some of the time in my calendar is to do certain thinking or certain long-term visioning, especially in the morning. I'm clearer in the morning, right? And then get into the what should we do about this, or, you know, TechFest is the South by Southwest event in New Mexico, and I'm the lead for TechFest and other— this podcast— where are things going in the long arc? Not just, you know, hey, we need to get this grant in or serve this client or get them the notes or schedule so-and-so, right? Making sure we have time for that longer arc visioning.

Looking around the corner as you talk about it?

I think it's absolutely key. I often say that the urgent can be the enemy of the important. And the fact that you feel urgent and stressed does not mean that you're spending your time properly. It really, really— and it's hard because everybody wants your time and you're there saying, no, I'm going for a walk. And it leads to like, oh, great, I'm killing I made myself— she's off for a walk. But it's just absolutely critical. I guess the other two things I would say about that are, one, you know, as we think about these things, a single strategy generally isn't enough, right? So we really have to think about multiple strategies and really try to figure out, okay, if things go south, what's the first strategy? Is there a second strategy? Who else do we need to have engaged in this? Who do we need to get on board early? And then really trying to figure out when a pivot is actually necessary. I think part of the challenge, particularly in stressful times, is that people sometimes just grind to a halt.

And grinding to a halt is, again, you know, if there's one wrong answer, that's it, right? You know, grinding to a halt never works. And so figuring out if you're sort of in that place, how to get yourself out of it, how to think about potential strategies, how to think about Who's on your kitchen cabinet, so to speak? Who do you want to call and sort that issue out with? Who, you know, people may be calling you too for that. And that's something, you know, particularly as a senior woman here in Boston, we call each other, right? And rely on each other for that. This is not a solo task by a long shot. It can't possibly be. But all of those things together, realizing you have to move forward, thinking about multiple strategies, thinking about who else you want engage in the conversation or in the thinking about things, realizing you can't just grind to a halt, thinking about when the pivot is necessary. Those are all key to ultimately getting where you need to go.

Such great strategies. So let's do this. In a moment, I want to come back, Elise, and ask you about what are you seeing around the corner now in 2026? What kind of things are on your radar? And what are, are some of the planning you're doing, as well as some questions about BlueHub and where you think it's going. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. If you got the chance to interview over 300 of the world's top social entrepreneurs and impact investors, you'd have to be pretty clueless not to learn something. Fortunately, I've been paying attention. Over the years, some clear patterns have emerged. Balancing profit and purpose isn't optional.

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Use the link below to reach out about scheduling your strategy session. Welcome back, everybody. I'm here with Elise Cherry, and we are talking about economic development leading through uncertain times. And before the break, you were giving us some great strategies, Elise, about how to, like, resource yourself as a leader to do some of that looking around the corner. And after 40 years of building that muscle, I want to hear, what are you looking at around the corner? Like, here we are, lots of complicated times. Lots of changes in funding in the nonprofit sector, in the impact sector, impact investing sector. Capital's getting harder to access and more expensive, at least as I'm talking to people for— in many situations. Like, how are you thinking about 2026, 2027, 2028 in terms of how you're doing things both similarly? Maybe there's some things that aren't changing, but I'm also curious about what kind of changes are you making in in this context?

Sure. Well, that is the $64,000 question.

It's $64 million for you guys, right?

That's right. $64 million. So as I said, we hit our first downturn in 1992. Then we went through the dot-com crisis in the early 2000s. Then we went through the Great Recession, and now we're here. And the particular— the set of circumstances today, part of the issue is You know, every crisis is different, right? And the factors leading into it are different and the way to get out of it is different. So it's not like they're the same and there's a playbook, but if you've been through them before, you really do have a sense of kind of what to look at at least. And so one of the things that we did in 2025 was to say, we have a very aggressive lending goal this year.

Does that make sense, or should we really be spending more time taking a different kind of look at our portfolio and really trying to understand in light of the changing circumstances, have we taken account of all of the risks that are embedded there, or do we need to think about that differently? So what that all translates to is a ton of time that's spent on defense as well as offense. So we cut back our lending goals. We still had a fine year. We did, we did well, but not at the pace and not at the rate that we thought that we would. Same thing going forward. We're really being more conservative with respect to lending and looking more at what happens long-term. So if we're in the riskiest part of a housing development, say doing the construction lending, the pre-development lending and the construction lending, what does it really mean? Are there folks out there who are inclined to take us out in the long out we're in and what does it mean in terms of federal subsidy? And part of the challenge is nobody knows, right? Because nobody really knows whether the Congress and the executive function are going to get on the same page or are going to stay on different pages. What's been happening throughout the country with respect to immigration is of enormous concern to people.

We worry about, you know, what happens if that comes to Boston and how we plan for that. So I think part of what I would say is slowing growth, is one piece. Assuring that we are as— we have as robust a balance sheet as we can possibly have is a second piece. I've, I've always said that being marginal and being nonprofit shouldn't have anything to do with each other. And so we have tried hard to grow a really robust balance sheet because it gives us the opportunity, the time to work through difficult times. So that's a second thing that we do. Keeping the staff informed about where we are and why we're taking those decisions and helping people understand that their paychecks are not at risk because we are robust. And so what they can do is focus on their work, not worry about whether they have a job, is another piece that I think is really, really important.

And then I think the final piece that I would say— two more pieces. One is trying to figure out what in this setting changes our approach to mission, not the mission itself, but one of the One of the values that we have always lived by is that effective organizations evolve to meet the changing needs of their communities. And so we spend a lot of time looking out into the world and trying to figure out what our communities need so that we can figure out whether the work we're doing continues to be consistent with it. And then the final piece is just, again, continuing to pay a lot of attention to context and really trying to understand where things are going. So I would say, I don't know how many that is, maybe 5, but those are, those are the points that I focus on a lot in terms of trying to figure out, will we succeed or fail? You know, that's the answers in the future. We don't know. What I can say is we will do our damnedest to succeed. And I certainly hope that if failure happens, it won't be because we didn't look ahead.

And one of the things I really appreciate, Elise, is that it's a context-specific plan. It's not one size fits all. This is what effectively, but Oh, in this moment with these data points, this team, this phase of our organization, this amount of capital, these opportunities to invest before us, here's how we're going to play. And then even as you're going into that year, you're saying, oh, we want to adjust. In your case, you said, oh, we're going to throttle back a little bit and be a little more conservative so we have a little more runway and we have a little more opportunity to adjust by not being so aggressive in terms of how much is lent out. So I like the way you're— you have some strategies that have gone through 40 years, but each year, each phase of the organization, there's a lot of nuanced thinking in how you're approaching it, and I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

Thank you. Yes.

So when I was looking through BlueHub site, one of the things that really stood out for me, and, and I think it's a differentiator, and I'd love to hear your thinking. It's about measuring impact, right? This is the Impact Podcast. We're social entrepreneurs. You know, like, I could make— I couldn't have— I've been doing this for 18 years now and did it in the nonprofit as a social entrepreneur. Before that, I had a 15-year career where I was mostly doing it in the nonprofit space. That's my entire career has been about trying to help underserved communities in a variety of ways. Some of us are really, really good at measuring impact, and some of us are not. And when I was looking at Blue Hub website, you know, you're really good at saying, even in this podcast, you said, well, let's start with Roxbury.

Here's what Roxbury is like. And over the years, $130+ million invested, if I remember the number right. Like, you're both the narrative storytelling but also the numbers of how you've invested and what the returns have been. Just go to the BlueHub site. It'll be in the links, listeners, and you'll see some what I think is really good storytelling. And I think that measuring impact and being able to translate that into meaningful stories is an increasingly important skill, especially when capital gets harder, there's more people doing this work, nonprofit grants are getting harder to get. Talk to me about measuring impact. Does it feel like an important skill in your world? Is that story that I'm seeing on your website an accident? Yeah, just talk to us about measuring impact?

Sure. Well, I think measuring what we do is one of the most important things we can do, right? Because we're really trying to distinguish between, is this vaporware or is this real? And from my perspective, if I've spent 40 years creating vaporware, I got a big problem. So we really, really do try to figure out whether what we're doing is real and then how to share that. And you can see what's on our website. I won't go through all of it, but we've done almost 40,000 units of affordable housing. We think we've put through our foreclosure work $70 million back into lower-income communities. That's an enormous number. I mean, particularly when people talk a lot about the wealth gap.

When we think about our climate work, we've got, you know, it's somewhere almost 90 million kilowatt hours. And we usually tie that into number of homes or number of cars driven. Because the other piece of this is numbers suggest a specificity, which is important, but they don't necessarily register for anybody, right? What registers really is narrative and stories and things that people can attach their understanding to in some way that is consistent with the lives they lead. And so what we try hard to do is both. We capture all of the numbers, We scrub them. We try to be really, really careful that we're accurate there and that we really do have some understanding about, you know, for example, how much leverage we're getting off of a dollar invested, important, important numbers. And we try to tell the stories that make those numbers come to life because lots of people in the world are numbers-phobic. But even for those of us who aren't numbers-phobic, they're only, the numbers are only a piece, an important important piece, but a piece of the equation.

The other piece is really what we're all trying to do here is to help build the world we want. And I would describe that world as a world in which equity is a given and not a goal. And so the question is, I know we can't do it alone, but have we gotten ourselves a little bit closer to that? And what's the measure of that, right? How have we impacted people's lives? How have we impacted community lives? And so we try to tell both those stories. And that, I think, is what you see on our website. At least I hope that's, that's the message.

It came across to me.

Yeah.

So, so I would go out on a limb, and here we are trying to impart some wisdom that you've learned over 40 years. I'd go out on a limb and say, if you're going to lead in the economic development space, especially in underrepresented and underserved communities, if you are good at that combination measuring impact, the numbers but also telling the story, the narrative, that if your organization can do that well, you're going to have an easier time and you're going to get more done with less friction. And every dollar that you have to do something with, you're going to do more with it than an organization or a leader who's less good at those skills. Do you think I'm crazy for saying that?

No, I think you're probably exactly right, except what I would also say is is it doesn't have to all be in one person.

I mean, I've been in the organization. Yeah, right.

We have a fabulous staff, really fabulous staff, some of whom keep track of the numbers and some of whom help us tell the narrative. So, a single person. And if somebody says, well, I'm more of a narrative person or I'm more of a numbers person, great, go hire the other. But I think, you know, as I say, we're all human and I think a key is to really help the story come alive, right? I mean, think about it. If you're writing, or somebody was writing a reference letter for someone, and I said, you know, it can't feel generic, right? Who is this person? Help them come alive in this letter. And I think that's true for every single thing we do. And we're social beings, and that's what we need to do. So it's a combination of the two.

You don't want a circumstance in which you tell a great story, but when you dig into the numbers, really it's a bunch of, well, malarkey. You know, what you want is a combination of those two things, that you've really got good numbers, that you've really got good leverage, you know, against the money that's coming into the organization, but also that you can tell the story that the numbers have created. Absolutely.

So here you are, 40 years into this journey, Elise, tell us a little bit, if you look the next 5 years, BlueHub Capital, where do you think you're going? What are some of the things that get you out of bed and you're excited about looking forward a little bit?

Sure. Well, you know, this is a time of much greater uncertainty than we faced in a long, long time now. And so the real goal for the next few years is to make sure that continue to be as strong as we can be, that we continue to serve the needs of our communities. We have an undertaking that we're trying to get off the ground, which is really about helping applicants for citizenship with low-cost loans so that in fact they can become citizens of this great country. We're pushing forward on that. We have a lot of work going on with respect to systematizing all of our finance and so forth. And one thing that we actually haven't talked about is we're really moving forward on the AI end of the world too. And, you know, a year and a half, maybe 2 years ago, I sort of looked out and said, geez, if we don't get on board here, you know, we're a year behind now, we're going to be 5 years behind next year.

And none of us know exactly where this is going, but what we know is we cannot be left behind as a sector. So we now have our own internal chat, I guess you'd call it. We call it Blue. And so we can put all of our information in there. People can query it. It means that we can do analysis that would have taken people weeks, but now we can say, tell us about the last 20 loans we made that looked like this, and we can actually get that information out. So I'm hoping— I cannot imagine we will ever lay anybody off because of Blue, but I am hoping that we become more efficient in terms of the work we do. And that we can dig deeper so that we can make better decisions, which is all the more important in changing times.

So a lot of our focus over the last 18 months or so has really been about building out our internal capacity so that come what may, we are as teed up as possible to get there. And, you know, folks sometimes see that as not very interesting. I have to tell you, it's some of the most exciting work that we've done because it really means our ability to pursue mission is magnified.

Awesome. Well, Lisa, I could hang out with you all day. It's so— just been such an honor to learn about you and more about the work you're all doing. And I know you're busy, our listeners are busy. If there was something you were hoping we were going to get to, and/or there was something you want to leave our listeners with to help them navigate these very uncertain times, what would that be?

Well, I think what I would say is get up every day and stay the course. Do not give in to depression. Do not give in to negativity. That means we will never get out. So we really have to stay positive, not in a false way, but in a, I'm going to put one foot in front of the other and pretty soon we'll get somewhere. And I'm telling you, from the, as I said before, things make much more sense when you look back back than when you look forward. So never mind the blur, never mind the fog, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is the most important thing for our organizations, but even more important for the communities that we serve.

Awesome.

Elise, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, learn more about your work, what's the best way for them to do that?

Come in through our website. Happy to talk.

Great. So listeners, I put a link and some of the other things we mentioned in the show Well, Elise, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Well, thank you, Paul. This was just terrific. And I appreciate your listeners and everybody who is trying to build the world we want.

So listeners, just thank you so much for listening. And please, I know you know somebody who can learn from Elise's 40-plus years of doing this work. So please share this with somebody who can benefit from its message. A reminder, if you're ready to develop a strategy for your own impact business or organization navigating uncertainty, you need capital for something new, you can learn more about my work at paulzelliser.com. And until next time, please keep working for positive impact and letting your values guide your business. Mm-hmm.