Wright, Deborah C. 1958–

views updated

Deborah C. Wright 1958–

Bank president

Integrated Public Pool

Earned Graduate Degree from Harvard

Became a City Commissioner

A New Optimism, in Harlem

A 21st-Century CEO

Sources

The appointment of Deborah C. Wright in 1999 to head the largest African American-owned bank in the United States was met with a bit of industry skepticism, for the Harvard-educated executive had virtually no commercial banking experience. Yet Wright was chosen as the new chief executive officer of Carver Federal Savings Bank for her talents in coalition-building among business, government, and community leaders. It was hoped that Wright could help the Harlem-based bank emerge as a leader in what many viewed as a second renaissance for this troubled section of New York City. New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller described her as “part of a new generation of black professionals who went to Ivy League colleges and worked at the elite financial institutions of New York.”

Born in the late 1950s, Wright spent her early youth in Bennetsville, South Carolina. She is descended from four generations of Baptist ministers—from her greatgrandfather to her brother. Bennetsville’s Shiloh Baptist Church had been founded by her grandfather, and her own father, Harry was a leading civil-rights figure in his community during her childhood. An aunt, Marian Wright Edelman, was the first African American woman to be admitted to the bar of the state of Mississippi. Edelman also founded the Children’s Defense Fund, an influential lobbying group aimed at improving the lives of American children from impoverished neighborhoods, during the 1970s.

Integrated Public Pool

Wright grew up during the civil rights era. In South Carolina, she and her brother and sister attended an elementary school where they were the sole African American students. “It was intense,” she told Bumiller in the New York Times. “I felt pretty much just ignored.” With her siblings and father, Wright arrived one day at Bennetsville’s all-white public swimming pool as part of the Reverend’s plan to integrate it. When the Wrights moved to Dallas, Texas, they once again encountered racist attitudes, especially when court-ordered busing forced the area’s public schools to integrate.

Despite the hardships, Wright did well in school, and emerged as a natural leader. She discovered that, among her high-achieving peers in student government, prejudices about skin color were less obvious. Wright made a surprising choice for college, rejecting

At a Glance…

Born c. 1958, in Bennetsville, SC; daughter of Harry C. Wright (a Baptist minister). Education: Earned degree from Radcliffe College; earned joint degree from Harvard University School of Business and Harvard University School of Law, 19B4. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Baptist.

Career: First Boston Bank, associate in corporate finance, 1964–87; New York City Partnership (business advocacy group), New York, director of marketing, 1987–92; named to Housing Authority Board, New York City, by Mayor David Dinkins, 1992–94; named-commissioner for Housing Preservation and Development by Mayor Rudolph W, Giuliani, 1994; Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, director, 1996–99; Carver Bancorp, New York City, chief executive officer, 1999–.

Addresses: Office— Carver Bancorp, 75 W. 125th St., New York, NY10027–4512.

Atlanta’s prestigious all-black women’s college, Spelman College, in favor of Radcliffe, which is part of the Harvard University system.

Earned Graduate Degree from Harvard

Both Edelman and other women in her family were Spelman alumnae, but Wright was adamant about seeking out a different kind of college experience. “My father tried to convince me not to go, because he thought I was going to be disillusioned’ she told Bumiller, and admitted that he was correct, in a way. As Wright explained in the New York Times interview, she expected that such a rarefied, intellectual place would be free from the racist attitudes that had marked her youth in the American South, “but you just had a constant feeling of being unwanted,” she told Bumiller. Still, Wright excelled at Radcliffe, and was accepted to a prestigious graduate-school program at Harvard. In 1984, she was one of just 11 students to earn a joint M.B.A. and law degree.

Wright was hired by First Boston Bank as an associate in corporate finance. For a time, she entertained dreams of becoming the first African American woman to be offered a partnership at a large Wall Street investment firm. Her aunt and other family members, however, felt that such a career was a disservice to her heritage, and there was much family pressure on Wright to enter public service instead. When she quit First Boston after three years, she was earning 135,000 a year, but she admitted to a certain degree of disenchantment with the job. “It was a really bewildering time,” Wright told Bumiller in the New York Times, “because I had never been in a position where I didn’t achieve what I set out to. I was not connected in any way, not to the work, not to the people.”

Became a City Commissioner

In 1987, Wright took a pay cut of nearly 100,000 a year to work for a business advocacy group, the New York City Partnership, as director of marketing for a building project in Harlem. Five years later, she was named to the Housing Authority Board of New York City by Mayor David Dinkins. In 1994, Wright was promoted to commissioner for Housing, Preservation and Development by Dinkins’s successor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. She then moved on to become the director of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, a post that would give her tremendous experience in bringing together community, civic, and private-sector interests to revitalize blighted urban areas.

Empowerment zones, which were created during the first Clinton administration, were specially-designated urban neighborhoods that were given federal funds and tax incentives toward the creation of programs for new businesses, job training, and home ownership. The idea had stalled in Congress before an influential Democratic congressman from Harlem, Charles B. Rangel, rescued it. The part of New York City that included his district became one of the nine federal empowerment zones created in 1994.

Wright was the only person that both Rangel and New York state governor, George Pataki, could agree upon for the job. She oversaw a budget of 550 million, which was earmarked for improving the economic health of the area. At the time, Harlem had an unemployment rate of 19 percent, few large businesses, and a high number of high school dropouts. “This isn’t a job,” Wright told Bumiller in the New York Times. “It really is an emotional undertaking. It’s such a wound in the psyche of the African-American public to see this place that was such a mecca be on its back, and knowing that the answers are not really brain surgery.”

A New Optimism, in Harlem

Wright’s job as head of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development presented tremendous challenges. She maintained a somewhat uneasy alliance with Rangel and his office, but she soon became known as Harlem’s unofficial finance minister. “When people need things these days in Harlem, they go to Ms. Wright,” declared Bumiller in the New York Times. Under Wright’s leadership, funds were appropriated for a major retail and entertainment complex, Harlem U.S.A., that would include a Gap and a Disney store. The first major chain supermarket in several years also opened in Harlem during Wright’s tenure. However, not all residents were pleased with the changes taking place in Harlem. “Not surprisingly, she has set off neighborhood criticism that she is turning Harlem over to outside white businesses,” explained Bumiller.

In the spring of 1999, Wright was tapped to become CEO of Carver Bancorp, the parent company for Carver Federal Savings Bank, and the largest African American-owned financial institution in the United States. Carver Federal Savings Bank is also the sole African American-owned bank in the state of New York. Founded in 1948, Carver had suffered some heavy losses, and Wright’s predecessor had been fired as a result. Although Carver had 420 million in assets, it lost 5 million in one quarter during 1998, a state of affairs tied to the purchase of a new computer system and chargeoffs in Carver’s consumer loan portfolio. While searching for a new CEO, Carver rejected a merger attempt by another large minority-owned institution, Boston Bank of Commerce.

A 21st-Century CEO

Wright was heralded as the perfect combination of talents for Carver’s particular situation. The head of the CEO search team, interim president David R. Jones, told Black Enterprise writers Kimberly L. Seals and Eric L. Smith that choosing Wright was not difficult, despite the lack of banking experience on her resume. “We were looking for someone to take Carver into the next century,” Jones said. “…We needed someone that could assemble a team of high-class, young African American talent.” Another supporter of the appointment was Richard D. Parsons, president of the Time Warner media empire. Wright’s new employer, Parsons told New York Times reporter Terry Pristin, “is known as a safe place to put your money. But in terms of putting something back into the community, it didn’t do such a wonderful job. She [Wright] understands how this bank can use its depositors’ funds to help reenergize the community where those depositors live.”

Wright immediately began a program to revitalize Carver’s balance sheet and make it a key player in the rising economic fortunes of Harlem. Generally, banks in impoverished neighborhoods rarely offer the array of services that financial institutions in other communities do. However, Wright planned to make the seven Carver branch offices a more vital part of the community’s economy. She hoped to improve Carver’s rate of small-business loans, begin offering insurance and investment advice, and even introduce such conveniences as electronic banking and debit cards. “We should also be able to increase other services that our community uses on a regular basis, like check-cashing and money-wiring capabilities,” Wright told Seals and Smith in the Black Enterprise article.

Wright lives in Greenwich Village, a rather long commute to her Carver office on W. 125th St. Her father is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where, after Sunday services, many members of the congregation—either depositors or investors with Carver—complain to her about the bank itself or the price of its shares. “If we can’t exploit the growth in our own backyard, it’s hard to move beyond it,” Wright told Crain’s New York Business. “Our strategy is to focus our people on our core businesses and buy talent from others for services in which we can’t compete.”