Eric Weaver

Senior Advisor

As Senior Advisor, Eric supports the leadership team by advising on product development, geographic expansion, fundraising, partnership building, and overall strategic direction. Eric brings over three decades of experience in community economic development and community development finance. In 1992, he founded what is now the nation’s leading small and microbusiness lending CDFI, Opportunity Fund — now Acción Opportunity Fund. When Eric stepped down as CEO in 2017, Opportunity Fund had more than 100 employees and a small business loan portfolio of over $100 million under management. The company has also been a leader in Individual Development Accounts, Affordable Housing lending, New Markets Tax Credit lending, and advocacy on curbing irresponsible and predatory small business lending. Eric still advises the organization, which surpassed $1 billion in cumulative community investment in 2021.

Previously, Eric worked as a community organizer and project manager for an affordable housing nonprofit and as a relief worker in El Salvador, bringing aid to internally displaced refugees from the civil war in the 1980s. Eric earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard University and a master’s in business administration from Stanford University.