Jeremy Nowak Fellow (2026)

Description

SUMMARY:

This gap year Fellowship was created to honor the memory and contributions of Jeremy Nowak, the founder of Philadelphia-based Reinvestment Fund (originally, Delaware Valley Community Reinvestment Fund; later, The Reinvestment Fund). The fellowship supports a 2025 or upcoming 2026 college graduate, contemplating graduate school, in an academic and career pursuit that gives honor to Jeremy’s interests and pursuits. The Fellowship will last two years and will be targeted for an August or September 2026 start date.

ABOUT REINVESTMENT FUND:

At Reinvestment Fund, we are dedicated to making a tangible difference in the lives of underserved individuals and communities. Our mission is to create opportunity for underserved people and places through partnerships. We marshal the capital, analytics, and expertise necessary to build strong, healthy, and more equitable communities.

As a federally certified community development financial institution (CDFI), our job is to make finance an agent of positive change and equitable growth. We provide loans, grants and technical assistance to businesses and nonprofits. Our borrowers and grantees educate students, support local economies, and create jobs. They build affordable housing and provide community goods and services that include access to nutritious food, hunger relief, physical and mental health care, and other social services.

Learn more about what we do and how we work here.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

We are looking for a Fellow either in the Lending & Investing, Policy Solutions or Programs group.  In all instances, the Fellow would have the opportunity to gain exposure to all parts of Reinvestment Fund.

Requirements

EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS:

• Class of 2025/2026 college graduate, contemplating graduate school in an academic and career pursuit that gives honor to Jeremy’s interest and pursuits
• Excellent communication, analytical and organizational skills

As part of the application review process, interested candidates should submit the following: 

• An essay of no more than 1000 words (The essay should express how the applicant’s life history, experiences, academic interests, and career aspirations connect with the work of Jeremy Nowak, as described below. It should also express how time at Reinvestment Fund fits within your future plans.)
• Resume
• Transcript
• Two letters of support

Please prepare all materials to include with your application.  The deadline for submissions is 11:59 p.m. EST, February 15, 2026.

We will interview a set of finalists before a final selection is made. Questions regarding the fellowship may be directed to nowak-fellowship@reinvestment.com 

WORK LOCATION:

Reinvestment Fund provides a flexible, hybrid work arrangement. It is anticipated that a combination of working remote and in our Philadelphia office location will allow for face-to-face interactions. Depending on the nature of the Fellow’s duties, a more flexible work schedule may be considered.  

COMPENSATION, BENEFITS & CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT:

This Fellowship comes with a salary and ability to participate in the Company’s excellent benefits package including employer-paid health, disability and life insurance, 401(k) savings plan with employer match, flexible spending accounts (medical, dependent care, and transportation), tuition reimbursement, generous paid time off, and EAP program. As part of its professional development program, the company pays for CPE credits and time off to attend classes as required by its professional staff.

Reinvestment Fund uses E-Verify to validate all new hires' ability to legally work in the United States and all new hires may be subject to a background check.

Reinvestment Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or employment practices based on race, color, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, national origin, non-job-related disability, or status as a veteran. Reinvestment Fund is committed to belonging, culture and engagement throughout our organization and in our external investment practices.

Reinvestment Fund, Inc. has an affiliate, RF Impact Advisers, Inc. (“RFIA”) that is a state-registered investment adviser. In order to advance compliance with and prevent violations of federal and state securities laws and to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, RFIA has adopted a Code of Ethics to govern certain conduct of its staff, including certain staff of Reinvestment Fund because Reinvestment Fund is an advisory affiliate of RFIA. As part of this Code of Ethics, there are specific personal reporting and other requirements and disclosures of personal financial and/or securities transactions information. For certain individuals this reporting will extend to your household members.  

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ABOUT JEREMY NOWAK:

Jeremy Nowak was a native Philadelphian, born in 1951 in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city. He attended Central High School, Penn State University, and in 1986, he earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. He was married to Jano Cohen (teacher of the Alexander Technique and T’ai Chi Ch’uan instructor; fine art and documentary photographer) and had two children: Jessica Cohen-Nowak (attorney) and Adam Cohen-Nowak (physician).

Jeremy’s professional life began as a community organizer in the Logan section of Philadelphia. That work, and his observations about the capital starvation of urban neighborhoods, brought him to Reinvestment Fund in 1985 where he stayed until 2011 as its founding Director. Jeremy’s tenure at Reinvestment Fund included a term on the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Board of Directors, Consumer Advisory Council of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the boards of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, Mastery Charter School, Alex’s Lemonade Stand and the Philadelphia Citizen, to name a few. He won many prestigious awards and accolades throughout his career including The Philadelphia Award, and the Ned Gramlich Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Opportunity Finance Network.

Jeremy was a voracious reader (on a wide array of topics), a keen observer, fearless, data-based problem- identifier and problem-solver. His creation of Reinvestment Fund was not about lending money for the sake of lending money; lending money was the vehicle through which gaps and inequities could be addressed. That problem-solving vehicle took many forms. Most obviously was the design and deployment of various capital raising and deployment products. But it also included creating a real estate development company that, to this day, continues to transform one of the poorest African American sections of Baltimore. It included creating an online database and mapping tool, PolicyMap, to democratize access to critical public data. And it included creating a public policy research group (Policy Solutions), that could both look objectively and rigorously at Reinvestment Fund’s own transactions but also provide research to investors and policymakers so that their decisions, like Reinvestment Fund’s, could be rooted in a sound basis of facts. One of Jeremy’s deepest engagements in the local public policy realm was as one of the architects of Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

Jeremy was, for many years, an instructor at University of Pennsylvania where he taught on several topics including community and economic development. This was the perfect venue for him to bring the grounding of his life experience together with his unparalleled command of the academic literature to his instruction.

After leaving Reinvestment Fund, Jeremy served as President of the William Penn Foundation and then went on to found J Nowak and Associates, LLC. He had a close affiliation with ArtPlace, the Brookings Institution, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Lindy Institute at Drexel University. Jeremy wrote and published many articles and book chapters throughout his career. His last contribution to the world of public policy came with the publication of a book he co-authored with Bruce Katz titled The New Localism: How cities can thrive in the age of populism. Throughout his life, he

was the “go-to” person for elected officials, businesspeople, philanthropists, and investors needing his vision and unvarnished honesty.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY JEREMY NOWAK:

• Jeremy Nowak: Address Upon Accepting the Philadelphia Award (1995) - https://www.reinvestment.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/JN_Philadelphia_Award_Address.pdf
• Neighborhood Initiative and the Regional Economy (1997) - https://doi.org/10.1177/089124249701100101
• Nothing Left to Lose: Radical Policy Changes are Required to Uncover the Competitive Advantages of America's Distressed Cities (2000) with Ned Hill - https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/urban_facpub/565/
• Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment (2007) - https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/7121a6e7-d9ad-470f-a744-54178e00eb08 
• The Market-Building Potential of Development Finance in Older Industrial Cities (2008) in Vey and McGahey - Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America's Older Industrial Areas
• CDFI Futures: An Industry at a Crossroads (2016) - https://share.google/aTvTBfZ47WRzaHlZM
• Opinion Pieces published in The Philadelphia Citizen (2016-2018) - https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/about/the-philadelphia-citizen-masthead/jeremy-nowak/
• The New Localism: How cities can thrive in the age of populism (2017) with Bruce Katz