The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has launched a Native Community Development Financial Institution (Native CDFI) to spur economic vitalization. And they’ve named a homegrown community member to oversee it.Johanna Bartee, a former investment banker, commercial loan officer and project manager with expertise in technology solutions will lead the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) as Executive Director for the CDFI.The Native CDFI will support entrepreneurship and the Tribe’s economic development strategy. As a financial intermediary, a CDFI provides credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations, Bartee explained.In September, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s CDFI Fund awarded 302 CDFIs $202.2 million in awards. The awards, through the fiscal year 2018 round of the CDFI Program and the Native American CDFI Assistance Program (NACA Program), will enable CDFIs to increase lending and investment activity in low-income and economically distressed communities across the nation.  The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe was one of the awardees, Bartee reported on LinkedIn.The tribal newsletter explains that the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe new CDFI, working as an intermediary between investors and businesses opportunities, may have access not only to federal grant funds, but also to investment capital—including Community Reinvestment Act funding, which urges commercial banks to invest within the local communities where their customers hold bank accounts.Bartee counts more than fourteen years of professional experience in project management, investment banking, and most recently institutional banking. Her banking career focus has been serving non-banking financial institutions such as broker dealers, insurance companies, registered independent advisors, hedge funds, and private equity firms, with alternative asset lending products and high value commercial loan requests.Raised in Sequim, Bartee studied political science and government at the University of Washington in Seattle, and international politics and the Swedish language at Stockholm University in Sweden. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University in New York City.Bartee will work closely with the Economic Development Authority’s board of directors: Jack Grinnell (chair), Matthew C. Adams (secretary/treasurer), Celeste Dybeck, Louis Kardonsky and LaTrisha Suggs. “I’m proud to join them,” Bartee said.