EAH Housing Names President and CEO
Laura Hall has been named president and CEO of EAH Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing organization.
In her new role, she is responsible for the operations, real estate development, real estate management, and services for 20,000 residents, 500 employees, and more than 110 properties in 55 municipalities throughout California and Hawaii.
Hall has served as COO of EAH Housing since 2008. During that time, she has been an integral part of the development and implementation of business strategies and organizational growth. She has more than 25 years of leadership experience, including real estate development, facilities management, and client services.
Hall takes over the top post from longtime president and CEO Mary Murtagh, who has become executive chair of the EAH board.
Jamboree Hires First Northern California VP
Jeree Glasser-Hedrick has been named Jamboree Housing Corp.’s first Northern California vice president. In this role, she will oversee the firm’s expansion in the region.
Glasser-Hedrick has worked in affordable housing at the federal, state, and local levels of government as well as in the private sector.
In 2018, then Gov. Edmond G. Brown Jr. appointed her to serve as director of business development and government affairs at the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA). In addition to her work at CalHFA, she served as a deputy treasurer at the state Treasurer’s Office, where she oversaw the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC) and the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee. While also at the Treasurer’s Office, she served as CDLAC’s executive director.
Jamboree first began to acquire and develop affordable housing in Northern California in the late 1990s. The nonprofit’s housing portfolio in this region alone includes more than 2,000 units for families, seniors, and those with special needs at 16 properties in six counties—with another 169 units in the development pipeline over the next two years.
Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Jamboree has $627 million in affordable housing projects in its development pipeline and a portfolio value of $3.2 billion that includes the development of and/or ownership interest in more than 9,000 homes in more than 93 California communities.
Alberghini Joins HPN
Lisa Alberghini has been named executive vice president at the Housing Partnership Network (HPN), where she’ll lead peer exchange, policy advocacy, and communications.
Boston-based HPN is an award-winning collaborative of 100 of the nation's leading affordable housing and community development nonprofits.
An affordable housing industry veteran, Alberghini recently served as president of Planning Office for Urban Affairs (POUA), a HPN member organization, since 2003, She led its housing development, policy advocacy work, and social justice initiatives. Prior to joining POUA, she worked at The Community Builders for 18 years, serving as director of the Boston office.
CohnReznick Elects CEO
David A. Kessler, a veteran CohnReznick executive, has been named CEO of the advisory and tax firm. He will step into the role Feb.1 when CEO Frank Longobardi completes his term.
Kessler is a member of CohnReznick’s executive board and is managing partner for the real estate practice, the firm’s largest industry practice, directing the strategies and overseeing operations for the affordable housing, commercial real estate, construction, and tax credit groups. He led CohnReznick’s commercial real estate practice for many years, building a strong national practice and reputation for the firm among developers, investors, private equity fund managers, REITs, and other industry stakeholders. He is actively involved with the firm’s advisory, assurance, and tax practices.
He previously served as the co-office managing partner of the firm’s Bethesda, Md., office, where he is based. Kessler began his career at CohnReznick legacy firm Reznick Fedder & Silverman immediately after graduating from the University of Maryland. He has been with CohnReznick for more than 33 years.
LISC Names Annie Donovan to COO Post
Annie Donovan, former director of the federal Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, has been named COO of the Local Initiatives Support Corp.
A Pittsburgh native, Donovan has spent more than 25 years driving impact investing strategies that fuel economic opportunity and stronger communities. At the Treasury Department’s CDFI Fund, she steered innovative strategies to address local needs through programs like New Markets Tax Credits (NMTCs), the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program, the Capital Magnet Fund, and the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
Since leaving the CDFI Fund in January, she has been a senior fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, as well as at the Center for Community Investment (CCI) at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where she has helped advance CCI’s efforts to increase investment in health, housing, and climate solutions in disinvested communities. She also organized a racial equity learning lab for CDFI executives.
Earlier in her career, she was CEO of CoMetrics and a senior policy adviser in the Obama administration, working with the Office of Social Innovation and the Council of Environmental Quality. Donovan also spent 20 years at Capital Impact Partners, where she helped spearhead community investment efforts focused on education, health care, and housing.
KCG Announces COO
Peter Rutherford has been named COO at KCG Cos., a new position within the development firm. Rutherford will oversee and manage KCG’s growing support team and all post-closing activities for each deal.
The role represents the company’s growth and aligns KCG with other developers in the industry, according to the company, which has been among Affordable Housing Finance’s annual AHF 50 developers list the past two years.
Prior to joining KCG, Rutherford was a senior executive at Alliant Capital, where he was responsible for establishing and managing the firm’s joint-venture investments in affordable housing development. During his three-year tenure at Alliant, Rutherford helped produce a pipeline of 2,500 apartment units.
Greystone Names Chief of Credit for Freddie Mac Platform
Jerry Lam has joined Greystone as chief of credit for the company’s Freddie Mac Small Balance Loans (SBL) platform. As a top lender for Freddie Mac SBL transactions, Greystone consistently originates over $1 billion in loans for this category, including financing for multifamily properties between five and 50 units and loans from $1 million up to $7.5 million.
Lam joins Greystone, a real estate lending, investment, and advisory company, from Freddie Mac, where he most recently served as director of credit for its SBL platform and a senior member of the credit team. Prior to his tenure at Freddie Mac, he held a variety of production and underwriting roles at companies including Barings Capital, Capital One Bank (formerly Beech Street Capital), PNC Bank, and Highridge Costa Housing Partners.
He will be located in Greystone's growing Newport Beach, Calif., office.
Tiber Hudson Welcomes New Partners
Krista North and Matthew Grant have been named partners at the Tiber Hudson law firm.
They have expertise in real estate and transactional finance, with a focus on affordable housing, the tax credit industry, and community development financing.
North and Grant, who are based in the firm's Baltimore office, represent institutional lenders, community development financial institutions, tax credit investors, tax credit syndicators, developers, and local housing authorities in the financing, acquisition, and construction of real estate developments that utilize federal and state low-income housing tax credits, NMTCs, and federal and state historic tax credits.
Both negotiate complex construction and permanent financing structures that often include multiple levels of both conventional and subsidized financing, including tax-exempt bonds and other mixed-finance programs for public housing.
Dominium Adds to Team
Francis Singer has become a partner services senior analyst at Dominium, a leading apartment, owner, developer, and manager. He will be based in the firm’s home office in Plymouth, Minn.
In this new role, Singer will work with owners and project partners to execute individual financial goals and objectives. Additionally, he will review real estate partnership investment cash flow models incorporating partners’ after-tax position transactions into financial plans. Prior to Dominium, Singer worked at KleinBank as both a corporate tax specialist and financial analyst.
Lisa Williams has been named vice president of property management. She will be based in Orlando, Fla., where she will transition communities into a separately managed portfolio of market-rate-only communities.
Williams has extensive experience in the industry and has previously managed properties for Lexford, Whiteco, Equity Residential, and Stoneleigh Cos.
Amelia Kimball has joined Dominium as a property accountant based in the firm’s home office.
In this new role, Kimball is mainly responsible for all day-to-day accounting activities of properties within her assigned portfolio. Additionally, Kimball will be monitoring property expenses, analyzing trends in financial data, as well as interpreting information and obligations incurred to predict future revenues and expenditures.
Brandon Wark has been named risk manager and will be based in the Plymouth office.
In this new role to Dominium, Wark will assess and analyze the current and future risks of the organization, staff, and residents, while designing and implementing a risk management function to respond to them. Additionally, he will work with the existing claims teams, build and maintain broker and other vendor relationships, and oversee the existing risk transfer and control programs. Wark’s experience includes 17 years in the insurance industry in various roles, including claims, sales, marketing, client management, and brokerage.
