Michael T. Pugh

Michael T. Pugh began his banking career as a part-time teller while attending college. The Detroit native earned a degree in health care administration at Eastern Michigan University. In a 2025 WEMU interview, he connected his move into financial services with a desire to offer practical help: the bank branch, he recalled, provided older customers with both financial services and a sense of community.

Pugh went on to senior vice president roles at Citizens Financial Group and Capital One. He joined Harlem-based Carver Federal Savings Bank in August 2012 and served as its president and chief executive from 2015 to 2023, succeeding Deborah Wright in the top job. Carver had been founded in 1948 by a group of community leaders to serve African American customers, businesses and institutions that mainstream banks would not, and it stands among the nation's largest African American-operated banks, a community development financial institution and minority depository institution. In 2020, he testified before a congressional committee as Carver's chief executive, describing it as a community development financial institution and a minority depository institution. Crain's New York Business named him to its 2023 Hall of Fame, recognizing his mission-driven career in community banking.

In October 2023, he became chief executive of Local Initiatives Support Corporation, or LISC, one of the nation's largest nonprofit community development organizations, whose investments across its history amount to some $30 billion. Of his previous post, he had told a television audience in 2017: “Nearly 70 years since its founding, Carver has stayed true to its mission.”

PoliticsNY included him in its Black Power Players series, recognizing him as a leader in community finance. In the WEMU interview, he described LISC's work in housing finance, community programs and investment partnerships. His account links the personal relationships he first encountered at a bank branch with the institutional work of connecting communities to capital.