Victor Elmore, Chairman of the Board
Saurabh Narain
Brenda Ross-Dulan
Robert Schall
George P. Surgeon
Victor J. Elmore
President and CEO
Texas Mezzanine Fund
Victor J. Elmore has been the President & CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Mezzanine Fund (a statewide CDFI and CDE) since July, 2005. Prior to these appointments, he had been TMFs CFO since operations began in May, 1999. Since inception, TMF has provided over $116 million in financing to over 100 Texas communities. The firm has also leveraged an additional $341 million from banks and other lenders into its financing transactions. Starting with 2008, TMF has submitted eleven NMTC applications, and received awards on nine for a total of $368 million in NMTC allocation. Allocations has been deployed into thirty-one NMTC transactions throughout Texas plus seven internal NMTC loan pools.
Elmore serves on several business and civic boards of directors and advisory boards. Several of these boards include: the Texas Mezzanine Fund, the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition, Texas Community Capital, the VNA Foundation, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (JFK Museum), and the State Fair of Texas. Professional affiliations include the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs.
Elmore is a summa cum laude graduate of South Carolina State University earning a B.S. Degree in Business Administration, majoring in Accounting. He also earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Texas A & M-Commerce. Elmore is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA)
Saurabh Narain
President and Chief Executive
National Community Investment Fund
Saurabh Narain joined NCIF in 2003, and, under his leadership, the fund has become the largest equity investor (in numbers) in CDFI Banks in the country, grown assets under management to $228 million (including $206 million in NMTC allocations) and pioneered the development of NCIF’s Social Performance Metrics.
He is involved in policy and advocacy for the industry through his board positions in the CDFI Coalition and memberships with the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council (2008-10) and the Minority Depository Institutions Advisory Council of the Officer of Thrift Supervision (2009-11). NCIF is also a member of the Investors Council of the Global Impact Investing Network and the Strategy and Adoption Committee of the Impact Rating and Investing System led by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Prior to NCIF, he has had extensive experience in capital markets and risk management having worked at Bank of America for almost 17 years based in Asia and the US. Towards the end of his tenure in Hong Kong, he was Head of Marketing, Non-Japan Asia for Global Derivative Products. He has done business in almost 10 countries in Asia/US dealing with financial institutions, global multinational corporations and governments.
He is interested in inclusive finance and the microfinance movement in India. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association, Chicago Chapter and is a regular speaker in industry conferences.
Saurabh is a graduate of the ABA Graduate Stonier School of Banking (2007), and holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (1985), and a Bachelors of Arts (Honors) in Economics from St. Stephens College, University of Delhi (1983), India.
Brenda Ross-Dulan
Founder and Managing Principal
The Ross-Dulan Group
Brenda Ross-Dulan is the Founder and Managing Principal of The Ross-Dulan Group, a boutique strategy consulting firm designed to transform companies by transforming decision-makers. She leverages more than 25 years of experience in the ever-changing financial services industry, to help executives successfully navigate through periods of challenge and change to realize strong, immediate, and sustained results.
Prior to launching her consulting practice, Ms. Ross-Dulan was selected to lead the M&A integration of the Southern New Jersey Region of Wachovia and Wells Fargo – noted as the largest merger in the banking industry. She served as President of the consumer banking group for half of the State of New Jersey, overseeing more than $12 billion in deposits, $5 billion in loans while managing 1,700 employees. In this role, she was responsible for balance sheet and P&L management, performance planning, risk management, operational integrity, distribution strategies and community investments. Moreover, Ms. Ross-Dulan was charged with strategically integrating the consumer banking segment with other business segments, including mortgage, investments, and consumer products, to grow market share and profitability. Her region’s revenues exceeded $500 million annually and her region was recognized as one of the best places to work in New Jersey.
Her financial services experience includes corporate banking, construction financing for commercial real estate developers, and community development and investment. Driven by her personal mission to continue to make a difference in the lives of others, she leveraged the new opportunity zone legislation, to establish the RD Capital Partners. The firm seeks to demonstrate that investments in underserved markets can be both transformative and profitable for local stakeholders and investors.
Ms. Ross-Dulan has extensive experience in board governance primarily in the non-profit arena. She typically serves in roles of significant influence and leadership, often heading the finance and audit or strategic planning committees. In 2021, she was elected to the board of directors of NJM Insurance Group, her first corporate board. She has previously served on the boards of NJTV, Greater Trenton Initiative, Coopers Ferry Community Development Association, and most notably the Governor Phil Murphy’s Advisory Council for the Restart and Recovery of the state of New Jersey. She became the first African American female to lead a majority chamber in the State of New Jersey, when she was installed as the Chair of the Board of the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce in January 2020. She has been ranked as one of the nation’s most powerful women in corporate America by Black Enterprise Magazine and has received dozens of accolades as a leading executive.
Ms. Ross-Dulan holds a BBA from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
People who know Brenda describe her as caring, disciplined and visionary. Fearless in the face of challenge, she is guided by her personal mission: to make a difference in the lives of others and to leave them better off. That philosophy has led to countless testimonies about the impact she’s had on them, their careers and companies.
Robert Schall
Director and Founder
Self-Help Ventures Fund
Mr. Schall is a retired Senior Executive having worked over 45 years in the community development field. He helped to start and build Self-Help to become the nation’s largest community development financial institutions with assets under management of $4 billion. There he held a variety of senior position responsible for managing commercial lending, sustainable development programs, real estate development, capitalization, communications. In addition, he was President of Self-Help Ventures Fund for 33 years, Self-Help’s non-profit loan fund and real estate development arm. He retired in 2018 and now serves on Self-Help Ventures Fund Board of Directors and continues to consult to the community development investment industry.
Mr. Schall has trained and consulted with many domestic and international development finance institutions and has been a visiting lecturer at the University of North Carolina. Over his career he has served as a director of many local and national community development organizations, universities, and bank advisory boards. Previously he held positions as financial manager of a specialty food distributor, an Economic Development Specialist for North Carolina's Department of Community Development, and a Peace Corp volunteer in West Africa. Mr. Schall holds a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina.
George P. Surgeon
President and CEO
GSJ Advisors, Ltd.
George P. Surgeon is President and CEO of GSJ Advisors, Ltd. (GSJ). GSJ advises mission driven social enterprises addressing a wide range of complex challenges from capital raising to restructuring. GSJ also assists impact investors in evaluating investments in social enterprises. Prior to founding GSJ, Mr. Surgeon held executive positions in several community development banks including President and CEO of Southern Bancorp, Inc. and The ShoreBank Corporation. In addition to being a trustee of NCIF, Mr. Surgeon is also a member of the investment committee of Opportunity Finance Network and the strategic advisory board of TRP Lending. Mr. Surgeon has been a Director of IFF, the Belarusian Bank for Small Business in Belarus, and SOA Kredit in Azerbaijan and has served as a member of the Advisory Board of the U. S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, as a Member of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council, and as a member of the audit and finance committee of Calvert Impact Capital. Mr. Surgeon graduated from Wesleyan University and has a master’s degree from the University of Chicago.