Founder and President
Corporation for Enterprise Development
Robert E. Friedman is founder and chairman of the board of the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). He directs CFED's individual assets and microenterprise work.
For twenty years, Mr. Friedman and CFED have worked extensively with public and private policymakers in Federal, state and local governments, international organizations, corporations, private foundations, labor unions and community groups to design and implement innovate and effective economic development strategies. CFED's work emphasizes job creation through enterprise development, with a special concern for approaches that help establish sustaining economies in chronically depressed communities and among economically depressed populations.
Mr. Friedman and CFED have helped lead the U.S. development of innovative economic development strategies including microenterprise, flexible business networks, and individual development accounts, and economic health assessments. Current work focuses on: the Down payments on the American Dream Policy Demonstration (ADD), a 2,000 account, 13 site, $15 million test of the efficacy of Individual Development Accounts as tool for economic independence and related policy efforts; the development of a financial intermediary for microenterprise (FIELD); and the development of the concept and practice of "Common Assets."
Among Mr. Friedman's other major publications are:
The Return of the Dream: An Analysis of the Probable Economic Return of a National Investment in Individual Development Accounts (1995)
The Development Report Card for the States (co-author, 1986-1995)
The Safety Net as Ladder: Transfer Payments and Economic Development (1988)
Expanding the Opportunity to Produce: Revitalizing the American Economy Through New Enterprise Development (Co-Editor, 1981)
Mr. Friedman is currently director of CFED West in San Francisco. He was Founding Chair of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity; and currently services on the Board of Levi Strauss & Co., Ecotrust, California Tomorrow, Friedman Family Foundation, and the Rosenberg Foundation. Mr. Friedman is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
