Robert Weissbourd manages RW Ventures, LLC, an economic development firm specializing in technical analysis of urban assets and markets, and in creating the information, products and enterprises necessary to successfully grow urban and regional economies.

Weissbourd was a lead developer of MetroEdge, the Center for Financial Services Innovation, the Urban Markets Initiative and the Metropolitan Business Planning Initiative, which he co-manages with the Brookings Institution.

Weissbourd previously served for ten years in executive positions at Shorebank Corporation, designing, delivering and managing comprehensive development finance initiatives to invest in distressed communities. Before Shorebank, Weissbourd spent a decade leading complex civil rights and other constitutional litigation, and representing community and other non-profit groups and leaders. Weissbourd brings over thirty years of experience leading economic development work in dozens of cities and scores of neighborhoods.

Weissbourd is an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Center, and served as Chair of the Obama Campaign Urban Policy Committee, on the Obama Transition HUD Agency Review Team, and as President or Vice-President of the Boards of City Colleges of Chicago, Crossroads Fund, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, BPI and PROCAN, as well as on the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Law School.

Weissbourd is a frequent author, public speaker and guest lecturer on a broad range of urban markets, housing, business and economic development issues, and has testified on these issues before federal, state and local legislatures.