John McCray-Goldsmith
(he/him/his)
Nominee for Church Pension Fund Trustee
Nominado para el Fideicomisario del Fondo de Pensiones de la Iglesia Episcopal
80th General Convention of The Episcopal Church
80a Convención General de la Iglesia Episcopal
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July 8-11, 2022​
​John’s expertise includes a 25-year financial markets career spanning his current role as a portfolio manager and pension funding credit risk analyst for the world’s largest bank-owned municipal bond portfolio, an institutional investor and public infrastructure investment banker. His work with the Church covers roles as board member for the College for Bishops, endowment advisory board member for CDSP, vestry member, church musician, mission worker for 8 years in Nicaragua and Jamaica, and clergy spouse of the Very Reverend Julia McCray-Goldsmith, Dean of Trinity Cathedral, San Jose.
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Endorsements:
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The LGBTQ+ Caucus of The Episcopal Church
The Consultation
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The Very Rev. Miguelina Howell, Dean, Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford CT:
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"John would bring to that role significant experience in finances and management not to mention outstanding culture competency from his extensive experience of immersion in Latino cultures. John is fluent in Spanish!"
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The Rt. Rev'd Mary Gray-Reeves, Vice President of the House of Bishops
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“John would bring a rich, prayerful and thoughtful presence to the CPG board. His exemplary personal and professional experience demonstrates the faithful mission, social justice, and financial skills required of our CPG board members.”
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The Very Rev. Dr. Gray Lesesne, Dean, Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis
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“John has the financial expertise and strategic skills needed to manage and grow resources for the next generation of leaders in the Episcopal Church. His deep roots to thriving congregational life and pastoral ministry, bilingual skills, and commitment to multicultural inclusion will help our Pension Fund to continue its innovative work. I eagerly endorse him and look forward to voting for him.”
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"CPF needs trustees who have expertise and experience in areas of business similar to CPG’s principal businesses (e.g., investments, pensions, employee benefits, insurance, and healthcare) and
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relevant skills (e.g., accountants, attorneys, and other business and financial professionals), in addition to
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experience with the Church.
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It is vital that incumbents have computer literacy and internet access.
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In addition, CPF and its trustees value diversity (broadly defined) on the Board of Trustees."
"Follow the Money!"
A Vision Shaped in Mission
Nobody ever said that to me growing up in Kansas (the Sunflower State) as grandson, son, and brother of ordained protestant ministers! A fluent Spanish speaker since my childhood as a missionary kid in Costa Rica and Mexico, my first "real" job out of school was a seven-year run as a missionary in the Caribbean myself with Habitat for Humanity International. My wife Julia and I worked as community organizers/builders/fundraisers developing a 500-unit hurricane reconstruction housing program in the coastal city of Bluefields in the Anglican Diocese of Nicaragua . (We also rebuilt the Anglican rectory, a new elementary school and a city-wide network of bus shelters as side projects). From there we collected our Nicaraguan-born sons Amos and Aaron and moved to Jamaica to develop a mutual aid housing project in collaboration with the Anglican St. Andrew's Settlement mission in the Majesty Gardens garrison community in Kingston.
Those small infrastructure projects in struggling and dynamic urban areas led to broader commitments as I did indeed learn to follow the money to develop and finance critical public infrastructure projects and programs on the largest possible scale.
Investing in the Common Good
For the next 21 years I worked with a team of investment bankers at Barclays and Lehman Brothers structuring large-scale public infrastructure financings. We raised billions of dollars of capital in the municipal bond market for climate-related public infrastructure projects for start-up renewable energy municipal utilities, mass transit authorities, water and sewer utilities working in environmentally sensitive areas, toll bridges and roads, infrastructure projects in Indian country, conversion of a shuttered US Air Force base to civilian use, schools, public buildings, airports and California’s high speed rail project. During that time I held FINRA Series 7 and 63 licenses. My interest in the sustainability of pension plans stems in part from my own experience with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. As a young public finance professional, my pension contributions were taken over by the Federal government, where they are managed to this day.
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El Bluff, Nicaragua, 1989
Sustainable Church & Civil Society
I've serially invested myself in church and nonprofit commitments in roles ranging from clergy spouse, bishop's committee member, Godly Play teacher and church musician (currently in the Spanish-speaking Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe congregation at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in San José, California, in the Diocese of El Camino Real, where Julia serves as Dean). I served on the seminary endowment investment advisory committee for the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley; held the position of treasurer for a decade for the Nicaragua-based, ERD-funded, rural reforestation and sanitation infrastructure NGO El Porvenir; was president and CEO of the Huckleberry Mutual Water Company in northern California for seven years; and have been treasurer for the California Transportation Foundation and the Doyle Street Cohousing Association. During the pandemic I’ve worked as a Spanish to English legal translator on a number of cases for the asylum program of the San Francisco Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. I’m also on the Board of Directors of the Episcopal Church College for Bishops, where I serve on the audit, finance and curriculum committees.
I grew up singing and playing the cello in church. Over the last decade I sang bass with the Trinity Cathedral (Portland, OR) choir for several years (including a week-long evensong residency at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London), and have sung and played guitar and bass in Spanish-language liturgical bands in three different parishes. I joined the Presiding Bishop's delegation to the United Nations FCCC COP 21 climate negotiations in Paris in 2015 for two weeks as a musician accompanying Bishop Marc Andrus’ daily noon public prayer services while I participated in the finance track of the climate proceedings with the Barclays delegation. I'm currently working with the team editing the new bilingual Spanish-English hymnal/cancionero for The Episcopal Church.
As a clergy spouse and long-time church volunteer I have a deep interest in providing substantial and careful investments on an institutional level for crucial objectives including climate adaptation and mitigation, affordable housing, public facilities and infrastructure, and lifetime pension and health care funding for retired church workers who have followed God’s call.
I believe these investments—public and private—are an essential aspect of our pastoral care for each other. This is where I invest my expertise in service of God's creation. The Church Pension Fund is a fundamental underpinning of sustainable ministry in the church. A trustee role with the Fund aligns with my self-interest in helping it meet its objectives, my sense of mission and ministry, and my professional preparation and capabilities.
In my current day job I’m an institutional investor channeling billions of dollars of capital every year into affordable housing, public schools, community colleges, mass transit projects and other public infrastructure programs in the municipal bond market, and providing stewardship for the majority of Wells Fargo's $50 billion of municipal bond holdings. I serve as a portfolio manager leading a team of credit analysts for the largest bank-owned municipal bond portfolio in the world. In that capacity I also work on making community development investments that meet the bank’s Community Reinvestment Act obligations, and I’ve been a leader in the bank’s contributions to the public policy deliberations around the reform of the CRA regulatory regime that started in 2019. I’m a board member and technology chair for the Bay Area chapter of the bank’s Black and African American employee network and am engaged in a business initiative to increase home ownership for African Americans. My responsibility for the credit quality of the bond portfolio includes careful analysis of the public sector pension fund policies and funding levels of several hundred municipalities across the US whose bonds we own.
With my colleagues from Barclays at an event at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco
Celebrating the festival of Nuestra Señora de Juquila at Trinity Cathedral / Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in San José
Band rehearsal at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
Serving dinner at Doyle Street CoHousing
Beloved Community from Beginning to End
I majored in Government at Cornell University, where I graduated with a B.A. with Distinction in 1983. The following year I studied and worked in Central America. I was a volunteer ambulance attendant for the Costa Rican Red Cross, made several visits to the UNHCR Nicaraguan refugee camp at Tilaran, Costa Rica, and did a two-month stint as a farm laborer on a newly-nationalized coffee plantation near Tuma La Dalia, Nicaragua, within earshot of the Contra/Sandinista combat zone. During that year I applied to UC Berkeley, and in 1987 I earned a Master of City Planning degree from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.
After completing a squatter settlement housing finance and consolidation methodology for the Jamaican government’s housing bank--the National Housing Trust--as my final assignment with Habitat for Humanity eight years later, I returned to the US to assemble even more impactful tools for mobilizing capital for the public good, earning an MBA in Finance at the Haas School of Business. And ultimately, in the years that followed, I learned not just to follow the money, but also to steward and direct it creatively to care for people and institutions, building lasting support for the good of the Beloved Community. I feel called now to pursue a board seat with the Pension Fund that provides for the people and institution to which I’ve devoted much of my energy and love.