The Aspen Institute

Robert leverages his experiences in banking, law, real estate development, and consulting to lead America’s only Black-owned multibank holding company, Carver Financial Corporation, and its operating subsidiaries, Carver State Bank in Savannah, GA and Alamerica Bank in Birmingham, AL, which was acquired in 2022. Under Robert’s leadership, Carver has increased its equity capital by 5X, won $80 million in New Markets Tax Credits from the U.S. Treasury—the first ever in Georgia for a community bank or entity outside Atlanta—and created hundreds of jobs in distressed communities across the state. Robert also led the first ever all-Black bank syndicate to finance a project for a major American sports franchise, the 2021 refinancing of the Atlanta Hawks’ practice facility. Robert is Chairman of the National Bankers Association, the voice of the nation’s minority banks, re-elected for a second consecutive term in October 2022. He is also a board observer for Global Holdings, LLC and member of the boards of the Community Development Bankers Association, the National Black Bank Foundation. He founded and chairs the National Bankers Community Alliance, the nonprofit affiliate of the NBA, and serves as Executive Director of Carver’s nonprofit CDFI affiliate, Catalyst Development Corporation. In January 2022, he was appointed to a two-year term on the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Community Banking and a three-year term on the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Community Depository Institutions Advisory Council. A 1995 graduate of Harvard Law School and 1992 Howard University grad, Robert is father of one teenage daughter, a member of the Alpha Lambda Boulé of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and enjoys cooking and travel. He graduated from Savannah Country Day School in 1988 and received its 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award.