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Abby Nguyen-Burke
Abby Nguyen-Burke
Senior Vice President and Team Leader for Equity Alliance for Business, Eastern Bank
Age: 40
Industry experience: 20 years
Growing up, Abby Nguyen-Burke helped her dad with his small business. Her early job as a part-time bank teller at Eastern Bank became her gateway to open up new opportunities for underrepresented small business owners. She is the vice-chair of the policy committee of the Asian Real Estate Association of America, advocating for AAPI home ownership. Throughout her career, she initiated, volunteered and worked with a number of organizations aimed at fighting social inequalities and supporting and uplifting the members of minority communities.
Now head of the Equity Alliance for Business, launched by Eastern Bank this spring, she works to support and elevate women business owners and entrepreneurs of color with credit products and technical assistance tailored to help break down obstacles that historically prevented many from accessing the capital needed to grow.
Q: What prior experience are you bringing to this work?
A: I self-identify as first-generation Vietnamese-American, so I am very much like my dad, who is an entrepreneur of color. Growing up, I was helping him on his small business. He owned a small printing company. I was able to work with him on translations, data entry, as a receptionist and sometimes helping him a little bit with his Quickbooks. So, I feel like I grew up in and have been born to serve in this industry.
I really started from the ground at Eastern Bank. I had great managers, mentors and advocates throughout, so I learned all the ins and outs of our retail branches, how to run a branch. Then I came into our business banking division about 12 years ago and worked at the sales and production line in business banking. Some of my favorite memories were helping these small businesses open up their first free business checking accounts when they started their businesses, and I was able to grow with them as they grew. I was able to help them with things like working capital, loans and credit lines, and then moving to acquiring their first real estate. It’s really gratifying to see it all.
Q: In brief, what problems is the Equity Alliance for Business trying to work out answers to?
A: There are a lot of complex barriers that exist to prevent underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs from being able to access the financial and social capital that they need to help them grow and succeed. And that’s where Equity Alliance for Business comes in. At Eastern Bank, we really worked hard and long to address these barriers and we wanted to really push and dismantle that status quo by establishing banking relationships rooted in equity. We try to make sure that we structure this program in multiple different pillars from credit solutions to delivery models, to entrepreneur insights and tools – and all of the banking services and products that really help to bring these small businesses to the next level, to be successful and to prosper.
Q: Has the Alliance launched any new products, services or solutions? How are they different from traditional business banking offerings?
A: I mentioned those four different pillars that establish our program, and one of them is our credit solutions. We were able to leverage existing programs out there that financial institutions have access to but have not been able to fully utilize. We are working really hard to take these existing programs and implementing them with Eastern Bank. Some of those programs are a special-purpose credit program loan, as well as [Federal Home Loan Bank’s] Jobs for New England program where they actually subsidize some of the interest rates to some of the entrepreneurs.
The difference between traditional banking services and the solutions we offer, especially the special-purpose credit program loan, is that it gives us some flexibility to customize and establish those underwriting barriers. The journeys for people of color and women entrepreneurs are different. The customers in this ecosystem are very different so we try to customize and create various credit solutions for them. Sometimes it is not within the box as with the traditional banking offerings. We are able to customize some underwriting criteria. For credit score thresholds, we are able to take lower credit scores for granting the special purpose credit loan, and we consider different credit score thresholds depending on the customer.
Q: Has Eastern had to adapt, internally, to be able to offer these different products?
A: It’s part of our blueprint in Eastern Bank to push and dismantle the status quo, and our social justice mission drives us to make sure that small businesses thrive. One of the ways that we’ve done is that we’ve actually been the No. 1 SBA lender in Massachusetts for 14 years in a row, so it goes from the top down. I wouldn’t say there’s been some changes internally, but it’s just that we’ve been able to see the blueprint and actually roll it out to implement the program.
Back in 2008, we actually doubled down on small businesses and that’s how we changed a little bit of our focus, our strategy, and that’s when we started with a lot more of SBA lending and taking those programs and options to help mitigate some of the risks at that moment, so that’s when we started as the No. 1 SBA lender. And in 2020 with the pandemic and COVID, we understood that there were a lot of small businesses – the mom-and-pop shops – that could not get access to their banks. We collaborated with community organizations and put priority in making sure that those small businesses were heard. We were taking applications from them and with that, we helped over 18,000 Paycheck Protection Program loans with over $1.4 billion in PPP funds.
We are a team composed of 100 percent women, people of color, multilingual and LGBTQ [bankers] who aspire to represent the businesses we serve. We hear the stories, we live the stories and we feel the stories.
Q: The Alliance is also offering technical and other types of assistance to businesses. Why did Eastern think that was important?
A: This tackles our third pillar, the entrepreneur insights and tools. We actually do not have the expertise to facilitate the technical assistance, so we collaborated with community organizations. We signed memorandums of understanding with six community organizations: Interise, the Massachusetts LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, the Center for Women Enterprise, BECMA, MCCI and Ascendus. All six of these organizations help on the technical assistance side such as projections, business plans, certifications to be minority supplier or business or women-owned business, help them with equity into the business or a grant of microloan to get the businesses started. We’re really proud of these collaborations that we have with community organizations. While the five of us are a mighty dream team, we just can’t do it all, and we want to make sure that we serve our clients as best as possible. So, collaboration in this ecosystem is the perfect match.
Nguyen-Burke’s Five Favorite Meals:
- Vietnamese Sweet & Sour Soup with Catfish from Pho Le in Dorchester
- Omakase from Laughing Monk Café in Mission Hill
- Jerk Chicken from Jamaica Mi Hungry
- Sweets, cakes and cookies from Scale & Spoon in Marshfield
- Best Bento Boxes from JP Fuji Group (multiple locations in Greater Boston)
