Intern Confidential: Adam, Lending intern

We’ve been lucky this summer to have several fresh faces around the office as interns, rolling up their sleeves to learn what it takes to keep a community development organization like ours afloat. Here are their thoughts:

As a finance major, I came to ECDI hoping to learn about credit analysis, portfolio analysis, cash flows, and the use of financial ratios in ECDI’s lending department. Although I was able to learn about all of these things and more during my time here, what I learned about most was the importance of economic development in the lives of everyday Ohioans. Not only did ECDI’s activities help bring about measurable change in the lives of our clients, especially for our lending clients, but ECDI also worked very hard to support those individuals with technical assistance to ensure they would be successful even after their relationship with ECDI had ended. At ECDI this is common practice, but at many banks and mortgage lenders across the country, especially during the last few years, engaging in activities which knowingly harm their clients even before their business relationship is terminated was commonplace and eventually disastrous. While most banks in America do a good job of serving large businesses and medium to high wealth individuals, the riskiness and unprofitability of serving start ups and lower income individuals had made these clients targets for predatory lending long before the Great Recession completely ostracized them from traditional financing sources.

Intern Confidential: Catherine, Development Intern

We’ve been lucky this summer to have several fresh faces around the office as interns, rolling up their sleeves to learn what it takes to keep a community development organization like ours afloat. Here are their thoughts:

When I tell people I study Economics they ponder and think my days are full of analyzing numbers, finance, or some sort of math. I try to tell them that Economics isn’t all about math, and I haven’t been able to completely articulate what I mean, until I started working at ECDI.  Working at the Economic and Community Development institute is really about people, ideas, and innovation. Every day we work with people who want to make something of themselves. Young entrepreneurs and creative individuals who want to start their own business and provide for their families. We help them do that. And that’s what economics is to me. Utilizing creativity to make something happen.. -Catherine