Microfinance Alliance

Biography of Mihailo Temali

Mihailo Temali is the founder and President of Western Initiatives for Neighborhood Development (WIND), and Executive Director of the Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), both in St. Paul and Minneapolis. WIND has worked with over 60 inner-city neighborhood-based economic development organizations, city governments and small business organizations since 1990 as a consultant, providing assistance on organizational capacity building, small business lending, business training, commercial corridor revitalization and real estate development. WIND is a bank community development corporation, owned by Western Bank, a community bank in the Twin Cities.

NDC has combined the approaches of the micro-enterprise and CDC industries in a three-step program of inner-city entrepreneur training, lending and on-going support, along with a real estate development initiative. In partnership with 20 neighborhood and ethnic-based community groups, NDC has provided 16 weeks of business plan training to over 2,100 low/moderate income inner-city entrepreneurs since it was founded by WIND in 1993. Over 300 of these trainees are currently operating their business in their own neighborhood, from well-known ethnic restaurants to service businesses. Over 75% of these business owners are persons of color.

NDC has a loan fund of over $3.5 Million to finance the start-up or growth of these alumni businesses, including an Islamically-acceptable Reba Free financing product. NDC provides over 2000 hours of individual technical assistance each year to alumni businesses. This includes general management assistance as well as specialized marketing, legal and accounting assistance. NDC is involved in four business incubators including the Minneapolis Mercado, Plaza Latina and the Frogtown Business Center, as business trainer, lender, real estate developer, owner, on-site business assistance and/or property management.

From 1984 to 1990, Temali was the Executive Director of North End Area Revitalization, a CDC focused on commercial district revitalization in St. Paul's North End neighborhood. In 1982, he co-authored the first major national survey of business incubators with Candace Campbell. Temali served on Governor Jessie Ventura's Minority Small Business Task Force and the Governor's Entrepreneurial Academy, both in 2001.

Temali is the author of a 270-page book entitled "Community Economic Development Handbook - Strategies, Tools and Examples," published by Wilder Publishing in September, 2002. He spent six months in Santiago, Chile and four months in Boston working with economic development organizations between 1999 and 2001 on a Bush Fellowship. Temali has a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, and graduated from Macalester College in 1976. He grew up on St. Paul’s East Side.