Gerald Sherman is the Founding Board Chairman and Executive Director of the Lakota Fund, one of the first micro-credit loan funds in the U.S. and the first on an Indian reservation.  In 1989, Gerald traveled to Bangladesh where he studied the Grameen Bank, a world-renowned micro-credit bank developed by Mohammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. 

In 1991 Gerald went on to work for Norwest Bank (now Wells Fargo Bank) where he opened and managed a Norwest bank branch on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation.  In 1995, Gerald established the Community Development Office for First Interstate BancSystem, a large regional bank based in Montana.  The establishment of this office increased the banks services to lower income communities and particularly to tribal communities.  During his time with First Interstate he served as the Chairman of the Fair Lending Committee of the Montana Bankers Association.  Under Gerald's leadership the committee developed the first Uniform Commercial Code for tribes, an effort that has provided national leadership for tribal efforts at economic development. 

In 1999, Gerald joined Four Times Foundation; the only national organization providing equity capital to reservation based Indian entrepreneurs.   He developed and implemented the fellowship program on 5 reservations in 4 different states.  He is currently the founding President of Indian Land Capital Company, a national lending company providing capital to Indian tribes to buy back their former homelands. 

Since 1985, Gerald has been providing national leadership to the field of micro-credit, finance and economic development particularly as it relates to Indian Country. Gerald was a founding board member of the Association of Enterprise Opportunity, an association now made up of hundreds of micro-loan funds from throughout the U.S.  He is Chairman of the Board of IDRS, Inc., a Sacramento based non-profit that teaches and provides services in alternative dispute resolution in Indian Country.  Gerald is also on the International Advisory Council of the Native Nations Institute.  Based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, NNI, which is affiliated with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, is the premier organization in the U.S. that does economic research in Indian Country and teaches nation building principles to Tribal Councils and organizations.