Roy Swan

Roy Swan leads the Ford Foundation’s Mission Investments team, dedicated to investing $1 billion of the foundation’s endowment in opportunities that generate financial and social returns in the United States and the Global South. Roy also oversees Ford’s program-related investments and its impact investing grants program, dedicated to expanding and strengthening the impact investing field.

Before joining Ford, Roy served as managing director and co-head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley, which committed over $13 billion in community development transactions from 2009 through 2017. During his time at Morgan Stanley, Roy also served as president and chief operating officer of Morgan Stanley Trust, a federal savings bank subsidiary, and as CEO of Morgan Stanley Impact SBIC, which he co-founded in 2015.

Among his prior experiences, Roy was the founding chief investment officer of New York City’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a federal initiative designed to bring new resources to distressed urban communities that played a key role in Harlem’s economic rebirth. He also served as CFO at Carver Bancorp, a Harlem-based publicly traded financial institution and the nation’s largest African-American managed bank. Over the course of his career, Roy has worked in corporate law at Skadden Arps; investment banking at The First Boston Corporation, Salomon Brothers and JPMorgan; and general management/finance at Time Warner.

In addition to Enterprise Community Partners, Roy serves on several nonprofit boards, including the Dalton School, Low Income Investment Fund and the Partnership for After School Education. He also serves on the Investment Committee of Morgan Stanley Impact SBIC and the advisory boards of several private equity funds. 

Roy received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review.