Michael Swack is a faculty member at the University of New Hampshire, where he has appointments at the Carsey Institute and at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics. At Carsey, he is working on building scale in the nonprofit community development sector, innovations in community development finance, microfinance, and new models of social enterprise. He manages two ongoing projects: the Financial Innovations Roundtable (in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) and the Stonyfield Farm Entrepreneurship Institute (in collaboration with Stonyfield Farm Yogurt). He has over thirty years of experience in the fields of economic development, finance, microfinance, and development banking.

Michael was the founder and former dean of the School of Community Economic Development (CED) at Southern New Hampshire University. He has been involved in the design, implementation, and management of a number community development lending and investment institutions both inside and outside the United States. He was the first chairman and served for seventeen years as a board member of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA), a state-chartered equity fund for community economic development ventures and projects.

He is the founding president and a current board member of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. He was a founding board member of the National Association of Community Development Loan Funds (now the Opportunity Finance Network), a trade association of Community Development Finance Institutions, and a current member of the Community Development Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Internationally he has been involved in development finance and microfinance work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He received his doctorate degree from Columbia University, his master’s degree from Harvard University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.