Meet Ross Williams, NTCIC's Summer 2026 Open Access Fellow
At the conclusion of his fellowship this summer, we sat down with Ross to learn more about his background and future in community development. Read his interview below!
Can you talk a little bit about your background and what brought you into the community development world?
I grew up in New York City in a family where opportunity had to be built rather than inherited. I was the first man in my family to graduate from college, so I understand from experience what it means when opportunity depends on someone deciding to invest in you.
After college, I played professional basketball. Even then, I was drawn to business and finance, so when I transitioned off the court, I began building the career I had always envisioned. I started in accounting and capital markets in New York, moved into investment banking, and eventually earned my MBA at UVA Darden.
Alongside my professional career, I founded Freedom Financial, a financial literacy platform that reached more than 100,000 people. Helping people has always been a constant for me. That’s ultimately what brought me to community development and fund creation. The opportunity to do well while doing good, and to help communities filled with people who share backgrounds similar to mine, is something I had always hoped to be part of.
What are some of your professional strengths and interests?
Strategic thinking, financial modeling, and problem solving are some of my biggest strengths. I enjoy taking something genuinely complex, whether it’s a fund, a capital stack, or a tax structure, and building it into a model that anyone can open with confidence and trust. I also care about the unglamorous details, making sure documents align, numbers tie out, and assumptions are clearly documented so they can be challenged. Just as importantly, I enjoy making complex work visually clear and easy for the audience to understand.
Another strength is finding ways to improve how work gets done. This summer I leaned heavily into AI to pressure test financial models, automate repetitive tasks, and accelerate first drafts of analyses, allowing me to spend more time on judgment rather than mechanics. I enjoy identifying tools that make the entire team more effective, and I believe that ability will only become more valuable over time.
Beyond the technical side, I’m drawn to work where finance and mission intersect, because getting the numbers right is what makes the mission credible.
What have you been learning and working on this summer? Have you learned anything unexpected that you didn’t know before the fellowship?
The anchor of my summer was helping stand up a new lending initiative by building the fund model, working through the economics with our auditors and fund administrators, coordinating with tax and legal counsel, and drafting materials that explain the strategy to investors. It was a front row seat to how a fund is actually built, which is something very few people get to experience this early in their careers. I owe a lot of that opportunity to Adrian, who trusted me with the engine of the fund early on and encouraged me to speak up rather than defer.
Beyond the model, I had the opportunity to work across nearly every part of NTCIC, from acquisitions and asset management to investor reporting and fund development. That gave me a real appreciation for how each piece fits together. I joined the team for Historic Tax Credit Lobby Day on Capitol Hill advocating for the credit this organization is built on, attended a Novogradac conference, participated in AI training that I immediately put into practice, and spent time in Scottsdale, Arizona with Adrian, David, and Angelica during my first week, which set the tone for the entire summer.
The biggest surprise was realizing how much of launching a fund is about language, not just math. One of the hardest parts is making sure the financial model, legal documents, and investor materials all communicate exactly the same thing. I also learned that impact claims deserve the same level of rigor and precision as financial ones.
What are some of your goals and next steps when you finish the fellowship?
My next chapter is in corporate finance, where I’ll continue building technical and operational skills at a scale. What I discovered this summer, though, is that community development finance is not a detour in my career. It’s a space I hope to stay connected to throughout it.
Long term, I want to be someone who can move comfortably between institutional finance and mission driven investing, bringing institutional discipline to purpose driven capital. I also look forward to staying engaged with NTCIC and cheering the fund on as it reaches its milestones.
Who or what inspires you the most?
During my first week, David handed me a copy of Moral Ambition, and one idea from the book stayed with me all summer: ambition is a resource, and it matters what you point it toward. I saw that reflected throughout NTCIC in people who could work anywhere but choose to spend their careers making difficult deals happen in communities the market often overlooks.
For me, helping people has always been the foundation. I grew up seeing what happens when talented people never receive an opportunity, and being the first man in my family to graduate from college reinforced how one open door can change a family’s trajectory.
I’m also motivated by competing with myself to improve every day and by seeing something I helped build become real. Basketball taught me that the most valuable teammates are not always the loudest. They’re the people who consistently do the work no one notices. I’ve found the same to be true in finance.
Would you recommend the fellowship? And if so, who is the ideal candidate?
Without hesitation.
The fellowship gave me real responsibility on real work. It wasn’t a shadowing experience. The team, starting with David and Adrian, treated me as someone who could contribute to the fund’s history rather than as a summer visitor.
The ideal candidate is someone with strong technical curiosity who wants their work to matter beyond the spreadsheet. The fellowship rewards people who ask why just as often as how. You don’t need to arrive knowing tax credits. You need to care enough to get the details right, because in this industry the details determine whether communities ultimately get served.