Michael Curley is an attorney by training but has spent the majority of his career in finance. He is the founder and executive director of the International Center for Environmental Finance, which is funded with a $3 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and works in the former Soviet Union, Central America and Asia to develop financial systems for environmental infrastructure. For several years Mr. Curley served as Senior Financial Advisor to the Office of International Affairs at EPA.
Mr. Curley is a pioneer in the financial guaranty insurance industry. In the 1980’s, Mr. Curley raised the venture capital for, and founded the third financial guaranty insurance company in the world, where he served as president and CEO until he sold the company to the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. His company developed the first Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMO), and guarantied over $375 million of them.
Mr. Curley served as the President and CEO of the New York Job Development Authority, the State’s economic development bank. He also served as deputy secretary and general counsel of the New York State Department of Economic Development. He was also counsel to the New York State Science & Technology Foundation, the State’s venture capital agency. Prior to that, Mr. Curley served as the Parliamentarian of the New York State Assembly and associate counsel to the Speaker. Early in his career, he served as an assistant to Congressman Richard D. McCarthy in Washington. After leaving government in 1979, Mr. Curley became a partner in the New York City law firm of Shea & Gould.
Mr. Curley is the author of a textbook, the Handbook of Project Finance for Water and Wastewater Systems, published by Times/Mirror Books. He has also written a monograph on environmental finance and over a dozen published articles on finance and economic development. Mr. Curley founded the Environmental Finance Centers at the University of Maryland, Cleveland State University and at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University where he teaches Environmental Law and Environmental Finance and was also an Adjunct Professor of Banking and Finance at New York University where he taught Venture Capital as well as Capital Markets & Investment Banking.
Mr. Curley was appointed to the Environmental Financial Advisory Board at EPA in 1990, where he is now the longest serving member, having been reappointed for ten consecutive terms under three Presidents. He currently chairs the Board’s Financial Innovations Committee. Mr. Curley also serves on the board of directors of the International Rural Water Association, where he chairs the Marketing Committee, and was co-chair of the Environmental Finance and Budget Subcommittee of Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s Transition Team. Governor William Donald Schafer appointed him to the “Blue Ribbon Panel on the Financing of the Chesapeake Tributaries”; and, while living in New York City, Mayor Edward I. Koch appointed him to the board of directors of the United Nations Development Corporation.