After a successful corporate law career, Colón Cox joined NJCC, deepened its legal chops and strengthened its infrastructure for future expansion and achievement.
Community Development Financial Institutions provide capital to people and projects mainstream funding sources often overlook. Yet they must observe the same rigorous and intricate underwriting and compliance standards as conventional lenders. To do so, they often find innovative ways to structure and execute deals, which is why Bernel Hall knew he needed a powerful, astute and above all creative general counsel and chief compliance officer when he became New Jersey Community Capital’s president and chief executive officer in 2021.
Bernel’s goals were to grow NJCC’s programs, expand its geographic reach and maximize its impact in the communities it serves. After extensive due diligence, he honed in on Melinda Colón Cox, then a partner at a prestigious national law firm that specializes in financial services, as the right person to help him execute transformative change at NJCC.
But when Bernel reached out to Melinda regarding the position, she was set on staying put. “I loved the work I was doing and was on track to become a managing partner at the law firm where I worked. So I wasn’t looking to leave,” Melinda explained. Her mindset changed when she learned more about NJCC’s social impact mission and Bernel’s vision.
“He’s a brilliant strategist and talked about how important it is to strengthen, diversify and expand NJCC’s unique work beyond New Jersey. Their lines of business are more expansive and entrepreneurial than those of man CDFIs and are especially relevant given the economic uncertainty and affordable housing crisis we were facing then and now. As I learned more about NJCC, I realized its work is critical to communities like mine,” Melinda noted.
“I’m a first generation American of Puerto Rican descent and grew up in a single-parent household and my mother worked several jobs at a time to raise me and my siblings. I was the first and only person in my family to complete college and earn a post-graduate degree. Like many other Latinx or diverse groups, my family and friends often faced stereotypes and systemic discrimination,” she explained.
Melinda also found NJCC’s work in financial literacy compelling. “Growing up we never discussed the importance of budgeting or a 401k in our home,” Melinda explained. “That lack of education and knowledge could lead to lost economic opportunities in traditionally underserved groups.
“What Bernel told me about NJCC and its work was so compelling that it not only dispelled all my doubts but made me realize the difference I could make by joining this amazing organization” she said. “I worked hard to become the attorney I am today, and I always wanted to use my legal skills and knowledge to give back to my community and others like it.” Melinda came on board as NJCC’s first general counsel and chief compliance officer in April 2022.
When she initially assessed her new role, Melinda knew that she needed to establish a skilled, dynamic and robust legal and compliance department to meet NJCC’s changing needs. “The development of a strong legal infrastructure and implementation of policies and procedures on an organization-wide basis would be key to NJCC’s success,” she noted. Her goal was to focus on reducing liabilities and risk, implementing controls and efficiencies, supporting growth and expansion and helping to attract more capital and investment opportunities to increase impact.
“NJCC had hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets under management and was doing dozens of substantial, high impact deals but they didn’t have an attorney protecting them in-house and needed someone who would truly understand the business from an in-house perspective,” Melinda recalled. “To grow and thrive, NJCC needed to transform the challenges it was facing in dealmaking, compliance, execution and more into tactical advantages.”
In just over two years at NJCC, Melinda has done all that and much more. She has grown the legal team to include two attorneys and three paralegals to help with compliance, transactions, lending issues, real estate transactions and corporate governance, and developed and implemented a system to track various financial covenants and reporting deadlines across all NJCC’s contracts. The latter was part of her overall work to implement policies and procedures to enhance NJCC’s efficiencies and checks and balances. She also ameliorated transactions that were no longer advantageous to NJCC.
Melinda’s efforts and expertise have reduced NJCC’s outside legal spend and her acumen has been invaluable in helping NJCC develop and implement systems to simplify compliance and dealmaking, streamline execution, reduce liabilities, mitigate risks and power its growth and expansion.
“We have become more structured and strategic in the past two years,” Melinda acknowledged. “I’m proud to say that our team’s expertise and hard work, along with an increase in skills, knowledge and expertise at the board and senior leadership levels, has resulted in tremendous growth and impact on our overall performance. But I’m most looking forward to the next leg of our journey as we enhance NJCC’s corporate structure still further and expand to other cities that need our multifaceted and innovative products to create financial and economic opportunities for their residents.”