Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

An organization that was birthed as the Technology 2020 Finance Corporation is celebrating its 25^th birthday with a series of celebrations across the state, starting in Knoxville on July 30.

For Technology 2020, a then five-year-old venture development organization headquartered in Oak Ridge, having a financial arm to help those start-ups licensing local technology was a big, bold idea.

We recently talked with Clint Gwin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathway Lending, the successor to the Technology 2020 Finance Corporation. He’s a former Examiner with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who transitioned from the regulatory side to the role of helping small businesses and communities more than 21 years ago.

Even though we were on the founding Board of Directors of Technology 2020 and served as the organization’s third Chairperson, it was still a walk down memory lane as Gwin chronicled the evolution of the entity he leads that has grown from six employees when he assumed the top position to 67 today, not including six open positions.

Seven of those employees are in Knoxville.

“The SBA (Small Business Administration) Loan Program was how we started,” he said. The Appalachian Regional Commission also provided a significant boost to the fledgling lender when it provided funding for a revolving loan program.

“We had $6 million in assets when I became President. Today, that number is $338 million,” Gwin said.

The growth in assets is not the driver. Instead, it is the impact that those funds, raised from 43 banks over the years, can have on a community and the businesses that are located in underserved areas of the state. That’s the driver for Pathway Lending and its team.

Total capital deployed in 25 years stands at $540 million which translates into more than $1 billion in economic impact.

Pathway Lending relocated to Nashville soon after Gwin became the top executive, leaving David Bradshaw, a former Oak Ridge Mayor and current Pinnacle Financial Partners Area Manager, in charge of the Oak Ridge office. Thanks to two other Mayors – Bob Corker in Chattanooga, who went on to serve in the U.S. Senate, and Willie Herenton in Memphis – Pathway Lending established beachheads in those two cities, becoming a growing financial powerhouse across the state.

“We are very entrepreneurial,” Gwin said, and that became crystal clear as he summarized the evolution of the organization. “We’re as entrepreneurial as the businesses we work with. It’s all about building trust.”

A few of the highlights over the years underscore that entrepreneurial approach. They include:

• The Tennessee Rural Opportunity Fund, added in 2007;
• An energy efficiency and renewable energy retrofit initiative, added in 2010;
• The Affordable Multifamily Loan Fund launched in 2012 in collaboration with the Tennessee Bankers Association;
• The Pathway Women’s Business Center, launched in 2015;
• The Veterans Business Outreach Center, started in 2018; and
• Pathway Affordable Housing Corporation, started in 2024.

Pathway Lending is on its third allocation under the federal New Markets Tax Credit program. The goal of the initiative is to attract private capital into low-income communities by permitting corporate investors to receive a tax credit against their federal income tax in exchange for making equity investments in specialized financial intermediaries called Community Development Financial Institutions of which Pathway is one.

“For us, the question is how do we take that federal incentive and increase the impact on a community,” Gwin says. “Most companies we work with are staples in their community. They create jobs.”

In addition to the Knoxville celebration on July 30, Pathway Lending will also hold similar events in Memphis (August 27), Chattanooga (September 24), and Nashville (October 29).

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