Sally Smyth, Community Development Underwriter
Sally Smyth serves as a community development underwriter at LISC Bay Area. In this role, she is responsible for structuring, underwriting, and closing loans. Sally also provides technical assistance to borrowers. Sally believes deeply in LISC's mission to work with residents and partners to forge resilient and inclusive communities of opportunity. Her background in systems change, nonprofit organizational effectiveness, and public policy shape her approach to lending as one critical tool to advance this mission.
Prior to joining LISC, Sally was a senior loan officer with Community Vision Capital & Consulting (formerly NCCLF), where she underwrote deals in Northern California ranging from large New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) allocations for community facilities to small working capital loans for fishermen and farmers. Sally also helped to lead an ongoing process to review and revise Community Vision’s lending products, policies, and processes to more directly address racial and economic equity.
Sally’s additional professional experience includes four years with the Center for Effective Philanthropy providing rigorous, comparative stakeholder feedback to grantmaking foundations and two years as a presidential management fellow with the US Department of Agriculture and the National Economic Council. In addition, Sally helped to found and structure two nonprofits focused on policy and systems change: The Berkeley Food Institute at UC Berkeley and Opportunity@Work based in Washington, DC. Sally’s academic training includes a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a Master of Public Policy from UC Berkeley.