Former HUD Official Joins Integral
Denise Cleveland-Leggett has been named a senior vice president at The Integral Group, a prominent Atlanta-based development firm.
Cleveland-Leggett recently served as the Southeast region administrator of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where she managed more than 840 employees in 12 state and field offices.
As administrator of HUD’s largest region for more than three years, she oversaw the agency’s programs and operations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Cleveland-Leggett says she was a “general practitioner” at HUD, working with public housing authorities and developers across the region as well as visiting Puerto Rico and other areas after major disasters.
When transitioning from the federal agency this year, Cleveland-Leggett, a lawyer, says she had other opportunities in the private sector but felt a connection with Integral, a firm that’s developed affordable, mixed-income, and other housing as well as taken on challenging revitalization projects. “I will be a part of that, helping to expand the role of Integral not just in Atlanta but the entire country,” she tells Affordable Housing Finance.
Cleveland-Leggett’s new position is one of several recent leadership moves at Integral. Vicki Lundy Wilbon, a longtime member of the company, moved up to president of real estate earlier this year.
Jamboree Adds Executives
Lisa Andaleon has been named chief financial officer and Tish Kelly has been named vice president of housing development at Jamboree, a leading affordable housing organization.
Andaleon will provide executive oversight of and strategic leadership to Jamboree’s $3.2 billion asset portfolio. She will be a member of the executive management team, providing financial planning, strategic planning, and risk management evaluations for each housing development in the nonprofit’s portfolio—from predevelopment through lease-up and conversion to asset management.
Andaleon comes to Jamboree from the University of Southern California, where she served as director of operations and finance for the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, overseeing an annual budget of $33 million for the university’s technology development and commercialization office
Kelly brings more than 15 years of affordable housing experience to Jamboree, with expertise in land acquisition, entitlement, negotiation and structuring of limited partnerships, and the creation of finance structures that mitigate risk exposure. Additionally, Kelly has experience in due diligence, public agency debt financing, federal and state funding programs as well as pro forma analysis of low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) development.
Most recently, Kelly served as senior director of development for Excelerate Housing Group. Prior to that, she served as senior director of finance at Jamboree and held various positions with Alliant Capital and Meta Housing Corp. She is well acquainted with Jamboree’s housing development team, which she’ll be overseeing, according to the organization.
Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Irvine, California, Jamboree is an award-winning, broad-based nonprofit housing development company that develops, acquires, renovates, and manages permanently affordable rental and ownership housing throughout California.
NAHT Announces Director of Investor Relations
Christina Tracy has been named director of investor relations in the originations and capital markets group of the National Affordable Housing Trust. She brings to the role expertise in economic strategy, small business and community development, leadership, and affordable housing investment.
For the last 15 years, Tracy has gathered experience in the tax credit and community development banking sector with roles at Huntington National Bank and KeyBank. Most recently, she served as senior vice president, LIHTC investment manager, at Huntington.
In 2021, Tracy started her own business, Juniper Brewing Co., in Bowling Green, Ohio. The experience she has gained from this entrepreneurial endeavor has also influenced her approach to the development and well-being of communities.
KeyBank Names Northeast Relationship Manager
KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment (CDLI) has appointed Franz Hewitt as a relationship manager to expand its activities in the Northeast.
Based in New York City, Hewitt will be focused on CDLI’s affordable housing lending efforts in the New York metro market. The move comes as KeyBank continues its commitment to affordable housing across the country, with a focus on expanding its CDLI platform.
Hewitt brings more than a decade of public-sector affordable housing experience to Key. He recently served as deputy director for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s HUD Multifamily Program in its preservation finance division. Previously, he was a senior project manager at the New York City Economic Development Corp. In this role, he was responsible for sourcing and developing a robust pipeline of projects in key business sectors to advance the city’s economic and policy initiatives, including the Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program and the city’s industrial policy.
McClain Becomes Chair of Ballard Spahr’s Real Estate Department
Amy M. McClain, an experienced real estate attorney, has been named chair of Ballard Spahr’s real estate department. Based in the law firm’s Baltimore office, she becomes the first woman to serve in the role and the first to be based outside of Philadelphia.
McClain replaces Bart I. Mellits, who served as department chair for the past nine years.
She has been with Ballard Spahr for her entire career of nearly two decades, starting as a summer associate and becoming a partner in 2011. Before taking the reins of the overall real estate group, McClain served as practice leader of the affordable housing and community development group, which will now be led by Molly R. Bryson, a partner based in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
With a focus on affordable housing and community development, McClain represents public housing authorities and affordable housing developers across the country in the context of mixed-finance transactions. She is former chair of the Governing Committee of the American Bar Association’s Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, a leading national organization for the legal community in the subsidized housing space. She is the author of the Forum’s publication, “Beginner’s Guide to Public Housing Conversion Under RAD.”
Bryson focuses her practice on using federal and state tax credits to finance affordable housing, businesses in low-income communities, historic preservation, and solar energy, and on using the Opportunity Zone program to finance community economic development throughout the U.S. and its territories.
LIIF Adds to Team
Maygen Moore, director of national lending initiatives; Emma Chávez, Western region market director; and Ken Stewart, deputy director for the Mid-Atlantic region, have joined the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF).
Based in the Atlanta office, Moore works nationally to originate and structure innovative capital solutions for projects including education, housing, and community facilities.
Moore has worked in affordable housing and community development finance for over a decade. She previously served as the New York market lead at the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) where she managed a $120 million investment portfolio to drive housing policy and meet revenue goals. Prior to CSH, Moore held positions at Community Solutions and Breaking Ground, two nonprofit developers, where she provided leadership in planning, financing, and the acquisition and construction of community facilities and mixed-income housing projects.
At LIIF, Moore will oversee funds including the $243 million Golden State Acquisition Fund, the $28 million Fund to Preserve Affordable Communities, and the $13 million D.C. Preservation Fund.
Based in the Los Angeles office, Chávez is responsible for lending activities in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Her work includes developing, managing, and supporting local funder relationships and leading LIIF’s efforts in California-based affordable housing policy initiatives.
Chávez has 20 years of experience in affordable housing finance and development and a strong commitment to social justice via community revitalization. Prior to this new role, Chávez served as vice president of community development lending at Boston Private Bank, where she was responsible for growing and managing the bank’s California community development lending portfolio. Early in her career, she was a loan officer for LIIF and has also served as a lender at the California Community Reinvestment Corp. and the Chicago Community Loan Fund.
Based in LIIF’s Washington, D.C., office, Stewart has responsibility for deploying capital to help affordable housing developers acquire, preserve, or develop new affordable housing in the region. LIIF invests in affordable housing, early care, and education and other vital community assets that address inequities exacerbated by systemic racism and barriers to opportunity. The organization offers a variety of financing tools in the Mid-Atlantic region, including a $13 million D.C. Preservation Fund jointly managed with the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), secured and unsecured predevelopment and acquisition loans, several types of revolving credit lines for “quick strike” property acquisitions, and the recently launched $70 million Black Developer Capital Initiative, which will provide flexible funding for the growth of Black-led affordable housing developers in Atlanta, New York City, and the Greater D.C. area.
Stewart has been involved in affordable housing and community development finance at the local and national level for more than 25 years, previously serving as director of public finance for the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, deputy director of the Prince George’s County Housing Authority and DHCD, and deputy chief underwriter for Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital.
