Capital Ready: Building the Next Generation of Climate Resilience Hubs

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Long before the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), communities were organizing for climate resilience by building coalitions, creating community spaces, and demonstrating that resilience hubs are not a luxury, but essential infrastructure for neighborhoods most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

While GGRF represented an important chapter in this work and a major catalyst for climate financing, its progress has stalled under the current administration. The work itself, however, continues. This moment is bringing renewed attention to what durable, diversified, and community-centered climate financing requires.

The Anti-Displacement Network and Next City will host a conversation exploring what it takes to plan, fund, build, and sustain climate resilience hubs. The discussion will bring together perspectives from both sides of the table: coalitions organizing within their communities and mission-aligned investors who can help bring these projects to life.

The conversation will explore:

• Why coalition building is a foundation of capital readiness and what that organizing looks like in practice.
• The economic and social case for mission-aligned investment in climate resilience hubs, particularly in communities disproportionately affected by climate change.
• What it means for a community to be “capital ready” and the steps needed to get there.
• How small businesses can serve as community anchors and help mobilize local resilience efforts.

Guest Speakers:

Erica L. King serves as Senior Vice President of Lending and Operations for the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, where she provides executive leadership for the organization’s lending programs, operational strategy, and mission-driven initiatives. She oversees the Alliance’s Black Renaissance Fund, leading efforts to expand access to flexible capital for Black-led Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) while strengthening organizational performance and operational excellence.

With more than 20 years of experience in community development finance, Erica is a recognized leader in equitable lending, strategic partnerships, and organizational growth. Her expertise spans commercial and small business lending, credit and portfolio management, fund development, and impact investing. She is passionate about creating innovative financial solutions that increase economic opportunity, strengthen communities, and advance wealth-building for historically underserved populations.

Carly Finkle is the Senior Policy Manager at Canal Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the generational cycle of poverty for Latino immigrants in Marin County by lifting barriers to their success. She works at the intersection of climate justice, housing, and community resilience, with a focus on anti-displacement and resident leadership. Carly received her undergraduate degree and Masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley, and she is grateful for the professional opportunity to redistribute wealth, resources, and political power within her hometown of San Rafael.

Willow Lung, Ph.D. is the Founding Director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network (SBAN). She is also Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, where she also serves as Director of Community Development at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and Director of the Urban Equity Collaborative. Dr. Lung’s research focuses on suburban poverty, racial segregation, immigration, gentrification, redevelopment politics, and neighborhood opportunity. She is the author of The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge and Trespassers? Asian American and the Battle for Suburbia. Her research has appeared in popular media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, National Public Radio, New Republic, Bloomberg’s CityLab, and Al Jazeera. Dr. Lung holds nonresident fellowships at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center and the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program.

Moderator:

Anita Kumar Ph.D. is the Director of Community Coalitions & Investment at the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), where she leads initiatives to strengthen the capacity of CBOs and coalitions to build communities of belonging in place. Her work centers on aligning place-based investment with community priorities and advancing systems-level strategies for community investment, including BARHII’s Build for Belonging initiative and a growing national network of cultural community development leaders.

Prior to BARHII, Anita was Director of Neighborhood Collaborations at East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) in Oakland, where she led the Healthy Neighborhoods portfolio. She previously served as backbone manager for a neighborhood-based collective impact initiative that raised $2.7M over six years, supporting 30+ cross-sector partners to implement upstream, place-based strategies for resident health and well-being in East Oakland.

Anita serves on the Board of Community Vision, a California-based CDFI focused on community ownership of community assets, and was a member of the Center for Community Investment’s 2024–2025 Fulcrum Fellowship cohort. Anita holds a PhD and M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.