Ron Grzywinski is the chairman and CEO of ShoreBank Corporation of Chicago founded in 1973 at the time it acquired the South Shore National Bank of Chicago. Previously he was president of Hyde Park Bank and Trust Company and a bank in Lockport, Illinois.
Despite the fact that the idea that a for-profit institution could create public benefits was unimaginable to most, Ron and the group sought to demonstrate that a bank could profitably provide access to credit and capital to minorities to rekindle local market forces. ShoreBank created non-bank subsidiaries and nonprofit affiliates that could attract additional resources to its market.
In 1977, Ron was the only commercial banker to testify in favor of the Community Reinvestment Act, passed by the U.S. Congress to require banks to provide services in low income as well as to more affluent segments of their markets. In the 1980s Ron responded an invitation from an Arkansas foundation and then-Governor Bill Clinton to create Southern Development Bancorporation, a commercial bank holding company working in rural southern Arkansas. (This led Clinton when president of the U.S. to create the Community Development Financial Institution Fund.) A few years earlier, Ron and Mary Houghton had begun advising the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and its donors. In 1990 ShoreBank created a consulting company that advises banks in developing and transitioning countries on small business lending and in 2003 sponsored and now manages a parallel $28 million investment company investing in small business banks and regulated microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union.
In 1988 Ron received the Medal for Entrepreneurial Excellence from the Yale University School of Management. Ron currently serves on the boards of the Enterprise Foundation, Corporation for Enterprise Development, Ecotrust, and Ecotrust Canada. Ron holds a B.S. from Loyola University in Chicago.
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