Featuring Expert Insights from Allison Kern of Morro Ventures and Randy Kahn, Co-Founder of Greenline Community Ventures.
What happens when a deal doesn’t work out the way we hoped? In community development venture capital, success stories matter, but so do the hard lessons from the investments that don’t go according to plan.
On this webinar, Allison Kern (Morro Ventures) and Randy Kahn (Greenline Ventures) will share real-world examples of deals that ran into challenges, the decisions their teams made along the way, and what they’d do differently next time.
Moderated by Kerwin Tesdell, President of CDVCA, this conversation will go beyond the headlines and dig into:
- How experienced fund managers approach deals that don’t meet expectations
- What they’ve learned about structuring, supporting, and exiting investments
- The role of transparency, flexibility, and mission in navigating setbacks
Join us for a candid look at the other side of the deal cycle and a chance to hear how seasoned investors turn challenges into strategies for stronger portfolios.
This webinar is part of CDVCA’s ongoing series to highlight real-world insights from the field—and to deepen our shared understanding of what it takes to build thriving businesses in underserved, low income, and rural communities.
Featured Funds:
Morro Ventures is located on the 9th floor of the Banco Popular Building in Old San Juan. When it was completed in 1939, it was the tallest building in the Caribbean at the time. Morro Ventures is Puerto Rico’s first institutional early-stage venture capital firm investing in technology companies across Latin America, particularly those that operate in or can leverage Puerto Rico as a platform for cross-border growth. A thriving Latin American tech ecosystem provides high-quality deal flow and expanding market opportunities for young companies, many of which view Puerto Rico as an entry point to the U.S. and Caribbean markets.
Greenline Ventures (“Greenline”) is an impact-focused investment management firm that specializes in providing creative and flexible capital to underserved businesses and communities that are often neglected by traditional capital providers. Since its inception in 2004, Greenline has raised over $1.8 billion of capital and has invested over $2.5 billion in businesses and projects in high distress census tracts throughout the country.Greenline is an employee-owned and minority-controlled entity headquartered in Denver, CO with offices in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Orlando.
The Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA) is the network of the community development venture capital (CDVC) industry. CDVCA builds the capacity of the community development venture capital impact investment industry by providing education and networking opportunities, developing best practices, and supporting positive public policy. CDVCA also manages over $350 million, including the $45 million Puerto Rico Fund for Growth, the $46 million Innovate NY Fund, smaller funds focused on Arkansas, Kentucky, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and Mississippi, as well as national pools of capital.
Meet the Speakers
Allison Kern is a Partner at Morro Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund in Puerto Rico seeded by Advent-Morro Equity Partners. Allison joined the Advent-Morro family in March 2017 from StarVest Partners, a $250 million expansion-stage venture capital fund based in New York. At StarVest Partners, she was the sole support to the three partners and led deal sourcing and due diligence for the fund. Prior to StarVest, Allison was an investment analyst reporting to the CIO of a $5 billion emerging markets hedge fund within the Carlyle Group. At Carlyle, she analyzed emerging market stocks based on macro trends and industry disruptions. Allison began her career in London working across equities, debt, mergers and acquisitions (“M&A”), and restructuring to progress the Royal Bank of Scotland’s strategic plan to dispose of assets in its government-mandated “bad bank” and promote the future operations of the firm. Allison graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Randy Kahn is an Executive President and Co-Founder of Greenline Community Ventures, LLC (Greenline). Greenline’s lines of business have included managing over $750 million of assets for institutional investors as well as securing and deploying NMTC allocation on a national scale. Over the past 20 years Mr. Kahn has been involved in delivering capital in low-income communities or to low-income people in a broad array of activities in the US and abroad. This activity includes housing finance, project finance and private equity deal analysis/investment. He has participated in helping to raise over $1.5 billion of debt and equity funds for not-for-profits, government instrumentalities and private clients. This activity has primarily been related to the New Markets Tax Credits industry where Mr. Kahn and his colleagues have closed over $1.2 billion of qualified equity investments into projects with total costs exceeding $2.5 billion. Mr. Kahn has made investments as a CDE, as a NMTC equity investor and as a leveraged lender.
Mr. Kahn formerly served as the Associate Managing Director of Virgin Islands Capital Resources, Inc. (VI Cap). In this capacity Mr. Kahn raised funds from the CDFI Fund under the Core Program and thus became one of the first two pure venture funds ever to receive a CDFI Core Program award. Under the guidance of the Managing Director, Mr. Kahn was responsible for the overall operating of VI Cap including CDFI Compliance. Mr. Kahn has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton.
Kerwin Tesdell is president of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA), which promotes the availability of startup and growth risk capital for businesses that create good jobs, productive wealth, and entrepreneurial capacity to advance the livelihoods of low-income people and the economies of distressed communities. CDVCA builds the capacity of the community development venture capital impact investment industry by providing education and networking opportunities, developing best practices, and supporting positive public policy. CDVCA manages $320 million, including the $45 million Puerto Rico Fund for Growth, the $46 million Innovate NY Fund, smaller funds focused on Arkansas, Kentucky, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and Mississippi, as well as national pools of capital. Kerwin has been an adjunct professor at New York University for more than 25 years, teaching Social Venture Capital at the Stern School of Business and Community Development Law at the School of Law.
Prior to joining CDVCA, Kerwin was a program officer at the Ford Foundation, where he had primary responsibility for the Foundation’s investments and grantmaking for small business finance and job creation. Before that, he was the Director of the Community Development Legal Assistance Center, an associate with the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, and a law clerk to federal judge Constance Baker Motley, Chief Judge of the Southern District of New York. Kerwin is a board member and past board chair for seven years, of the Coalition of Community Development Financials Institutions (CDFIs). He serves on the boards or advisory boards of eleven impact investment funds around the nation, as well as the Financial Innovations Roundtable at the Carsey Institute and Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Kerwin graduated from Harvard College with a degree in economics and holds JD and MBA degrees from New York University, as well as a certificate from the Venture Capital Institute.
Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA)
475 Riverside Drive, STE 1264, New York, NY 10115
