Policy reports

Laura Benedict is Vice President and Director, Development, Communications and Policy at Self-Help in Durham, North Carolina – the largest social lender in the United States of America. This 30 year old non-profit “bank” has invested over $5 billion in low-income and minority communities. Before joining Self-Help’s staff in 1989, she worked with Catalyst, a national non-profit women’s organization and taught English in China. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and her MBA from the University of North Carolina. During Laura's Ian Axford Fellowship exchange to New Zealand she was based at the Ministry of Social Development and Philanthropy New Zealand in Wellington, where she researched opportunities social lending offers to New Zealand’s public and private grantmakers as well as social enterprises, non-profits, iwi, and low-income communities.