Making an impact

CFO stakes claim in rural community development

Published July 30, 2023 by Sydney Lake

Virginia Business’ 2023 Virginia CFO of the Year award winners represent large and small businesses and large and small nonprofits. 

Small nonprofit | Clyde Cornett, Executive vice president and CFO
Virginia Community Capital Inc., Richmond

Richmond-based Virginia Community Capital Inc. was a $15 million organization when Clyde Cornett joined as chief financial officer in 2008. Now, it’s grown into a community development financial institution with $559 million in total assets under management.

A CDFI can include regulated institutions such as banks and credit unions or nonregulated ones like private equity funds. Founded in 2006 and seeded with $15 million in seed capital from the state government, VCC provides credit and financial services for underserved populations, and it finances projects aimed at benefiting the community ranging from solar energy, food access to affordable housing.

Since its inception, VCC has helped to finance projects that have created or retained more than 14,000 jobs and established more than 12,000 affordable housing units. In 2022, Cornett helped secure more than $36 million in equity from the U.S. Treasury’s Emergency Capital Investment Program for VCC’s mission-focused community development bank.

“We operate with the idea that we want to balance the social impact with financial sustainability,” Cornett explains. “Some folks will go on that journey with us, but some people immediately [focus on the] financial return conversation because they think of banks as being purely profit-driven financial organizations. Having the opportunity to secure that capital was a pretty big deal for us.”

Nevertheless, raising deposits for the bank is still top of mind for Cornett so the bank can continue making loans for affordable housing projects or to underserved small businesses, he says.

“They can’t afford these rate increases. With funding costs being what they are, some projects are just getting stalled as a result,” he explains. “So, one of my biggest priorities is to really help figure out ways to raise deposits less expensively and figure out how to fund all these projects that really need it.”

With a passion for community development work, Cornett, who is based in Christiansburg, also dedicates his time to causes in Southwest Virginia, where he grew up in the Appalachian former coal town of St. Paul. He is a founding director of Appalachian Community Capital (ACC) and has served on its board for a decade, supporting CDFIs in the ACC’s service region, which extends from New York to Mississippi.

Also under the umbrella of community development work, VCC in 2017 launched LOCUS Impact Investing, an investment advisory services group that helps philanthropic organizations invest in their communities. Cornett also helped to develop the nation’s first community investment guarantee pool, another financing tool for affordable housing projects, small businesses and climate-related lending.

Starting out as an accountant, Cornett would once have described his leadership style as directive — solely focused on deadlines and deliverables. As a business administration and accounting graduate from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Cornett previously served as a senior manager with Greenville, South Carolina-based accounting and consulting firm Elliott Davis.

But his work in community development has led him to appreciate partnerships, teamwork and collaboration, he says. In fact, some of the team members he brought on a decade ago when he started with VCC still work with him today.

“I built the team from scratch — they’re awesome,” he says. “I’m trying to support them in clearing hurdles in the organization and really trying to encourage them to step into their own leadership.”  

Read more about Virginia Business’ 2023 Virginia CFO of the Year award winners: 

• Large business | Cindy Yao, executive vice president and CFO, Markel Food Group
• Small business | Jason Chesky, CFO, Logenix International LLC
• Large nonprofit | Jim Barker, CFO, Delta Dental of Virginia

RELATED STORY: 2023 CFO trends — talent shortages and AI

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