Lynn Fernandez

Lynn Marie Fernandez is a small-business credit and lending executive based in the Greater Los Angeles area. She earned a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and Financial Management Services from the University of Denver. She began her career in bank regulation as an Officer of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), serving as a Safety and Soundness Bank Examiner, Credit Officer, and Credit Analyst — a background that grounded her later work in credit risk and underwriting discipline.

She subsequently held Vice President roles at two California banks, City National Bank and California United Bank, before moving into mission-driven community lending. As Vice President of Lending at the Valley Economic Development Center (VEDC) — a Van Nuys-founded (1976) non-profit CDFI that disbursed more than $35 million in small-business loans annually — she helped grow the organization's lending footprint from regional to statewide and ultimately national in scope. VEDC offered micro-loans (up to ~$50,000) and small-business loans (up to ~$700,000) alongside consulting and training. VEDC ceased operations and entered bankruptcy in 2019.

Since 2017, Fernandez has been a senior member of the leadership team at Lendistry (legal entity B.S.D. Capital, Inc.), a CDFI and non-bank small-business lender led by CEO Everett Sands. She joined the year Lendistry became an SBA Community Advantage lender, was there as it ranked #2 nationally in that program in 2018, and remained as it became (in 2021) the only African American-led non-bank SBA 7(a) lender. Over her tenure she has held senior credit and sales roles — including Executive Vice President of Sales and Senior Credit Administrator — and currently serves as Chief Credit Officer, overseeing credit policy, operations, products, servicing, and credit risk management. She was recognized in the Los Angeles Business Journal's "Women of Influence: Finance 2023."

• Operates in small-business debt financing, not venture/angel equity: micro-loans, SBA 7(a) and Community Advantage loans, and small-business term financing.
• Focuses on underserved and minority-owned small businesses — borrowers who often cannot meet conventional bank underwriting standards.
• Emphasizes designing underwriting practices and credit "mitigants" so that creditworthy-but-nontraditional applicants can still qualify, rather than rejecting them on conventional metrics alone.
• Stated philosophy (paraphrased from LA Business Journal profile): she sees every applicant as a person — "an individual with a family and a community to support" — a perspective shaped by growing up with an entrepreneur father.
• Decision lens is credit risk management balanced with mission: keeping loan portfolios sound while maximizing access to capital for small-business owners.