Debby Warren

Deborah B. Warren has spent the last thirty years promoting social and economic justice by doing, funding and studying community-based development and community philanthropy across the American South. She served as the first leader of the Southern Rural Development Initiative (SRDI) for 12 years, catalyzing new local and statewide organizations and initiatives across the rural South. As founder and first Executive Director of the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, Warren helped catalyze more than $40 billion in lending for low income and minority communities across NC. Working for 12 years in the state's legal services programs, she helped build the community economic development infrastructure in North Carolina. Warren also served as the co-editor of a weekly newspaper in rural North Carolina. She has served on the boards of many state and national community development organizations.

Warren earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago (Phi Beta Kappa) and a Masters in Regional Planning from UNC-Chapel Hill. She first taught at the Sanford Institute in the Fall of 2007, a class called “Community Philanthropy and Community Change”. She was recognized as Tar Heel of the Week (Raleigh News & Observer), was a Salzburg Seminar Fellow, a Sabbatical Fellow (Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation), Practitioner of the Year (National Economic Development & Law Center) and a Fellow at the Fulbright Summer Institute at UNC.