Contact Search

Barbara VanScoy

Portfolio Manager

Barbara is an experienced Fixed Income Asset Manager known as a pioneer, innovator and expert with over 20 years in Community Development Impact Investing. She has a proven background of success in the industry funneling more than $6B in assets to community development funds through effective market research, portfolio management and new product development in support of socially responsible and environmentally sustainable initiatives. In 2008. Barbara was named one of the “20 Rising Stars of Fixed Income” by Institutional Investor Magazine.

A well-regarded author, speaker, thought leader and expert on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and Impact Investing, Barbara…

  • Created proprietary software system to allow for tracking, management and measurement of community development assets, investors, and social reporting metrics.
  • Created one of the first Healthy Communities and Green/environmentally-friendly high credit quality fixed income portfolios.
  • Part of the team to pioneer cutting-edge investment management process leveraging a research method which combines ESG/impact research with financial analysis.
  • Responsible for community development investing on behalf of bank shareholders resulting in 100% success ratio on over 1,000 public performance evaluations.
  • Participated in inaugural and 2nd annual Rural Opportunity Investment Conference sponsored by White House Rural Council.
  • Worked with senior officials of the White House Administration to invest $100MM in government-assisted rental housing in support of environmental and energy efficiency initiatives.
  • Composed comment letter to bank regulators to influence regulatory changes to the Community Reinvestment Act.
  • Created social impact reporting, which has become industry benchmark for impact investing.
  • Barbara serves on the Board of Directors for the Southern Municipal Finance Society. She served as Chair in 2014 and 2015, and served as Secretary from 2011 to 2013.
  • Barbara served on the Board of Governors of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts from 2012 to 2017, and has articles published in the Bond Buyer and Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Community Investments.

In the Pulse & Publications

Nov 5, 2020

Optimizing Our Fixed Income Portfolio

Last year, Heron decided to pull $30 million of our fixed income portfolio in-house, to be managed by an internal fixed income manager, Barbara VanScoy. In this blog post, we chronicle the experiences that led to and came from that decision.

Feb 10, 2020

A Tale of Two Tools: Financing Housing in the San Joaquin Valley

At Heron, we try to use all the tools in our toolkit to finance organizations who are serving the people and communities we care about. Recently, we used two different tools to provide financing to Self Help Enterprises (SHE), an organization offering homeownership opportunities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Oct 15, 2018

Heron’s Fixed Income Letter of Intent

To convey our values and mission to our preexisting and prospective managers, Heron has created a Letter of Intent for our Fixed Income portfolio.

Oct 15, 2018

Heron’s Fixed Income Letter of Intent

To convey our mission to our preexisting and prospective managers, Heron has created a Letter of Intent for our fixed income portfolio.

Aug 30, 2018

Thinking Out Loud: Implications of the Small Business ACE Act

This summer, Congressman John Curtis (R-UT) introduced a bipartisan bill called the Small Business Access to Capital and Efficiency Act, also known as the Small Business ACE Act. The point of the Small Business ACE Act is to strengthen the Small Business Administration 504 loan program (SBA 504) by reconciling conflicting requirements and removing unnecessary burdens.
More