Bob is the founder of Gray Ghost Ventures (GGV) and responsible for the vision behind GGV. He currently leads the team as Chief Executive Officer.

Bob is an entrepreneur. He likes to start stuff. Some folks find him permanently outside the box. In real estate he pioneered the Single, Tenant, Cross-dock, Expandable, “STCDE” shell, a speculative building concept that took Robert Pattillo Properties to eighth on the list of the largest industrial developers in the United States. He began his work in microfinance in 1998 in a donor capacity. He subsequently sold his 54-year-old business in 2003 to focus solely on impact investment and enterprise development.

Bob’s first microfinance work was on the board of the Deutsche Bank Microcredit Development Fund. ACCION board service soon followed, which then led to field work in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where he helped leaders of Arab microfinance banks create a network called Sanabel. The original 17 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the network serving 170,000 clients grew over nine years to 61 MFI’s serving 3 million clients, mostly women. The MFI’s operate in some of the toughest environments in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, strengthening families and communities.

The work in MENA led to the establishment of the Gray Ghost Microfinance Fund, a regional microfinance equity-fund incubator. The work of the fund was extremely successful, resulting in the establishment of a number of innovative microfinance investment vehicles. These included funds such as Antares, which focuses on creating a secondary market in microfinance equity and established some of the first employee stock ownership plans in MFI’s anywhere in the world; Catalyst Microfinance Investors, which raised $120 million in private capital, making it close to the largest microfinance equity fund in the world; and the Bellwether Fund, which completed deployment of its first fund into 14 highly regarded MFI’s, helping to develop the next generation of Indian microfinance leaders.

The success of the Gray Ghost Microfinance Fund led to investment in other enterprises serving low-income communities in developing countries, including Cell Bazaar, a “Craig’s-List”-type service for Bangladeshi farmers that utilizes cell phone technology; D.light Design, the creator and distributor of solar-powered LED lamps in rural India and Tanzania; and the Indian School Finance Company, a lender to schools serving low-income families in Hyderabad, India.

Bob currently serves on the boards of Catalyst Microfinance Investors, the ASA Foundation, Por Fin Nuestra Casa (a company that converts shipping containers to affordable housing), and the Legatum Center for Social Entrepreneurship at the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. He has spoken widely, promoting impact investment to a range of audiences including, Goldman Sachs partners in London, Triple Bottom Line Investors in Paris, microfinance leaders in Morocco, students in Boston and Atlanta, fund investors in New York and pension fund managers in San Francisco. He is also a regular speaker on the international microfinance and social investment conference circuit.