Big Bet: Help distressed communities across the United States access public, private, and philanthropic capital, investing in locally driven projects that strengthen long-term economic opportunity, produce quality jobs, and other place-based outcomes.
Project: The project supports governments, investors, and philanthropists in understanding how public finance can expand needed investment and realize place-based outcomes, including creating good jobs and supporting long-term economic growth. Their unique approach brings together multiple sources of funding — public dollars, community investment, philanthropy, and private investment — into one coordinated strategy, instead of treating them separately. By helping city and state leaders align these resources around community priorities, it makes it easier to invest in projects that create quality jobs and strengthen local economies. It also uses data tools to track whether investments are truly improving livelihoods and opportunity. By connecting these pieces into one system, the initiative helps communities attract more resources, use them more effectively, and deliver lasting economic benefits.
Lourdes Germán, J.D., is a public finance leader with experience in law, investment banking, and policy. She began her career as an attorney and later served as Vice President at Fidelity Investments, General Counsel at Breckinridge Capital Advisors and a director at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where she advanced municipal fiscal health initiatives with global partners. Lourdes currently leads the Public Finance Initiative as Executive Director and teaches public finance at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. A former chair of the Massachusetts State Finance and Governance Board, she has held numerous state and national roles in the public finance ecosystem and served as a co-author of the United Nations Handbook, Finance for City Leaders.