Ronald L. Walker, II President and Founding Partner

Ron’s primary focus is on corporate finance, including debt and equity financing, investment strategy, investment management, and customer acquisition for Next Street.

Ron has more than 17 years of experience in a wide variety of settings, including commercial and retail banking as well as business development and stakeholder management in the Boston target market, and nationally.

Before co-founding Next Street, Ron was Executive Vice President and Regional Executive of Retail Banking for Sovereign Bank in Greater Boston, managing 200 employees in the bank’s 38 Business Banking Centers in Greater Boston, Brookline, Cambridge and north of Boston. As a senior executive, Ron was responsible for the overall management, revenue generation, customer acquisition, marketing, deposit growth, and small business lending activities of the bank in the Greater Boston region. With more than $1 billion in commercial and retail core deposits and loans, his region was the bank’s largest in size and scope, and generated over $100 million dollars in organic core deposit growth annually. In addition, Ron was appointed by the bank’s President to chair the Sovereign Bank Massachusetts Advisory Board and lead the Business Banking initiative in Massachusetts to increase small business lending activities and commercial deposit generation there.

Complementing his position as EVP for Retail Banking, Ron had portfolio oversight and senior credit authority for small businesses in the Greater Boston market. He was thus directly responsible for the identification, approval, oversight and portfolio management for small business deals that required executive-level input. In this role, he built his intimate knowledge of the market’s needs and opportunities.

Before joining Sovereign in 2000, Ron held several senior-executive roles in commercial and retail banking. From 1990 to 2000, at Fleet Financial Group, he was Senior Vice President, retail market manager and Senior Vice President of Northern New England’s Business Banking Group.

Ron began his professional career as a senior marketing representative for Xerox Corporation, and as an academic specialist for IBM. He started his banking career in the commercial lending management program at the Bank of New England in 1988.

Ron is very active in his community, including a range of civic and professional organizations. He serves as chair of the board of the Roxbury Comprehensive Health Center and as vice chair of the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center in Roxbury.

Ron is a recipient of the Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Top Young Leaders Award, director Spike Lee’s “Mo’ Better Award” for leadership, and the YMCA Black Achievers Award. In 2004, he completed the Harvard Business School Executive Program’s Finance for Senior Executives and is a graduate of Prairie View A&M University of Texas with a B.B.A. degree in marketing and finance. Ron has played competitive football at both the college and semi-professional levels.