Invest Newark Names Carmen Gandulla as CFO

Invest Newark has named Carmen Gandulla as its new chief financial officer, bringing more than 15 years of government and financial services experience to Newark’s economic development agency.

Gandulla comes to the role after a senior leadership position with the City of Jersey City, where she managed a $1.35 billion financial portfolio and oversaw a $650 million annual operating budget. Those numbers aren’t small-agency experience. They put her in the same weight class as executives running regional banks and mid-size hospital systems, the kind of institutional muscle Invest Newark has been signaling it needs as its lending programs and land development work scale up.

Invest Newark serves as the City of Newark’s primary economic development arm, working across lending, land banking, broadband infrastructure and housing access. The agency’s Newark Fiber initiative, which aims to close the digital divide in one of New Jersey’s largest cities, sits among its most visible programs.

“I have spent my career building the financial infrastructure that makes missions like this possible,” Gandulla said, according to ROI-NJ. “From the growing lending program and Land Bank creating homeownership pathways, to Newark Fiber closing the digital divide, my job as CFO is to build the financial foundation that takes all of that to the next level.”

That quote is more than the usual new-hire boilerplate. Gandulla named specific programs and specific outcomes, which tells you she did her homework before signing on.

Her background spans financial strategy, capital and grant planning, treasury operations and audit readiness, areas that matter enormously for a public-facing agency that depends on a mix of municipal support, private investment, and state and federal grant dollars. Getting those audits clean and the grant pipelines organized is unglamorous work that keeps the whole operation standing.

Beyond the balance sheet, Gandulla carries a community development record across New Jersey. She holds leadership and advisory roles with LUPE, the Latinas United for Political Empowerment organization, the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and New Jersey City University’s President’s Community Advisory Council. She’s also the principal of The C Company and serves as a New Jersey State Puerto Rican Commissioner. That combination of financial chops and community-side engagement isn’t something you see on every CFO resume, and for an agency whose core mission is economic equity in an urban environment, it matters who’s running the numbers.

Invest Newark has been pushing into territory that goes well beyond traditional economic development playbooks. A Land Bank creating homeownership pathways. A fiber network bridging connectivity gaps in low-income neighborhoods. A lending program extending capital to borrowers who don’t always get a fair look from conventional lenders. Each of those requires not just vision but someone who can structure the finances to make them durable. Grant compliance. Debt management. Budget forecasting that accounts for variable public funding streams.

That’s a real job. It doesn’t run on good intentions.

Gandulla’s appointment signals that Invest Newark’s leadership wants the CFO seat occupied by someone who can manage complexity on multiple fronts simultaneously, tracking federal grant requirements with the same attention she brings to community stakeholder relationships. Her record in Jersey City, where she handled a portfolio pushing into the billions, suggests she can hold both.

Newark has been competing hard for investment and talent against every other postindustrial city trying to reposition itself, and economic development agencies are often where that competition gets won or lost at the staff level. The agency’s programmatic ambitions won’t mean much if the financial infrastructure isn’t built to support them across budget cycles, administration changes, and shifts in federal funding priorities.

Gandulla was direct about what she sees ahead. “My job as CFO is to build the financial foundation that takes all of that to the next level,” she said.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority tracks development activity across the state, and Newark has emerged as one of the more active corridors for both public and private capital deployment, making a well-structured development agency CFO more consequential than the title might suggest to outside observers.