Roy Swan leads the Ford Foundation’s Mission Investments team, responsible for approximately $1.3 billion in capital dedicated to advancing social justice and addressing inequality through impact investing.
Before joining the Ford Foundation, Roy was managing director and co-head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley. His team committed more than $13 billion of the firm’s capital to community development transactions.
Roy was the founding chief investment officer of New York City’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, which played a key role in Harlem’s economic rebirth. He also served as chief financial officer at Carver Bancorp, a Harlem-based publicly traded financial institution and the nation’s largest African American managed bank. Roy has worked in corporate law at Skadden Arps; investment banking at the First Boston Corporation, Salomon Brothers, and JPMorgan; and finance at Time Warner.
Roy is a current or past board member of numerous nonprofits, including the Dalton School, Enterprise Community Partners, and the Low Income Investment Fund. He is also a current or past member of several private equity fund limited partner advisory committees, including Brightwood Capital Partners, Core Innovation Partners, and National Equity Fund. Roy continues to serve as a general partner and board member of Morgan Stanley’s Small Business Investment Company, an entity he co-founded in 2014.
After Princeton, Roy received a law degree from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review.