Carl Rist

Carl Rist is an independent consultant located in Durham, NC, who specializes in asset-building, economic opportunity and financial security strategies designed to benefit residents in low-income communities. Current clients include the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation, the Indiana Institute for Working Families, and Crisis Assistance Ministry, a Charlotte-based direct services agency. Previously, Mr. Rist spent almost 30 years at Prosperity Now (formerly the Corporation for Enterprise Development), working on a variety of strategies to expand economic opportunity and help lower-income households build wealth. Mr. Rist’s accomplishments at Prosperity Now included: 1) directing Prosperity Now’s efforts to ensure that more than a million low-income children have access to children’s savings accounts (CSAs), 2) launching and directing the 1:1 Fund, a fundraising and marketing tool created by Prosperity Now that has raised over $2 million from individual donors to help match the contributions of low-income children saving in CSAs, and 3) designing the prototype for the Prosperity Now Scorecard, a state-by-state data tool that assesses how well all families are able to build and preserve wealth, and how well state policies support wealth-building and wealth preservation. Mr. Rist earned an M.A. in public policy in 1991 from the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. He also holds an undergraduate degree from Davidson College.