Martin Eakes is the Chief Executive Officer of Self-Help/Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). Mr. Eakes co-founded Self-Help, a community development lender, in 1980. CRL's staff includes attorneys, researchers, and policy analysts in North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, CA, who study and report on predatory lending matters and monitor legislative and regulatory activity in state capitols and in the U.S. Congress. To date, the Center for Responsible Lending has helped save American families more than $4 billion annually.

Mr. Eakes holds a law degree from Yale, a Master's from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton, and a B.A. from Davidson College.