Catherine Godschalk is Chief Investment Officer at Calvert Impact, Inc. In this role Catherine manages Calvert Impact’s $550 million debt portfolio, invested through and alongside mission-driven financial intermediaries, funds, and enterprises advancing solutions to inequality and climate change across the US and in more than 100 countries around the globe. Catherine has led a more than doubling of the portfolio over her 12 years at Calvert Impact, driven by the creation and growth of new portfolio strategies in climate sectors of renewable energy, environmental sustainability, and sustainable agriculture, as well as expansion in the portfolio’s traditional sectors of community development, affordable housing, and micro- and small business finance. This portfolio is capitalized, primarily, by Community Investment Note proceeds, Calvert Impact’s flagship retail-eligible impact note, through which it has raised more than $3 billion of private investment from individuals and institutions over its nearly 30-year history. Catherine also oversees Calvert Impact’s Access program, which aims to scale small business lending with CDFIs and other community lenders.
Catherine is a board vice-chair and investment committee member for Coastal Enterprises, Inc., as well as investment committee member for ROC USA Capital and Appalachian Community Capital. She also serves on the Advisory Boards for the Carsey Institute for Impact Finance and the Conservation Finance Network.
Catherine has spent her 30-year career in various roles at the intersection of capital and impact. She was introduced to community development early in her career, as a program associate for SH Cowell Foundation, a Bay Area philanthropy that funded many of the area’s leading nonprofit affordable housing developers. Following graduate school, she spent 5 years in Fannie Mae’s Housing and Community Development division, where she advanced new product and other strategic initiatives aimed at addressing the challenges such as the minority- and low-income homeownership gaps, chronic homelessness, and the rise of predatory mortgage lending practices. She left Fannie Mae to join Self Help Ventures Fund where, for 6 years, she led their Washington DC office, built a portfolio of community real estate loans, raised both debt and equity for their national New Markets Tax Credit program, and, in the peak of the foreclosure crisis, led the organization’s national neighborhood stabilization program, which included a(n unsuccessful) lease-to-purchase mortgage product offering. Catherine has an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BA from Columbia University.
Outside of work, Catherine enjoys hiking nearby trails with her husband and dog, aspires to more patience and creativity than she possesses in her garden, and loves cooking a good meal to savor with family or friends. With her youngest leaving for college in the fall, she treasures time with her grown kids. She is happiest in nature, loves travel, and, at 50, finally worked up the nerve to get scuba certified, which has opened up a whole new underwater world to explore.
