BFIM Announces Changes
Greg Voyentzie has become CEO of Boston Financial Investment Management (BFIM) after serving as executive vice president.
Voyentzie joined the firm in 1999 and has over 24 years of experience in the affordable housing industry. While serving as an executive vice president, he co-led BFIM’s equity syndication efforts. Under his shared leadership, the company syndicated more than $2.3 billion of tax credit equity.
Catalina J. Vielma has joined BFIM as senior vice president, equity production. Based in Denver, she will originate tax credit investments across the Northwest. Most recently at National Equity Fund, Vielma served as vice president of originations and was largely responsible for doubling the company’s Colorado portfolio during her three-year tenure.
Prior to NEF, she served as a branch chief at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she managed more than $1 billion in Rental Assistance Demonstration developments nationwide.
Marcus Vivona has been named senior vice president, originations. Based in Columbus, Ohio, he will focus on cultivating developer relationships in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.
Vivona has over 20 years of experience in affordable housing and real estate development. Prior to joining BFIM, he served as senior vice president and director of acquisitions and financial structuring at National Affordable Housing Trust. He also gained tax credit experience working in various senior positions in project development and asset management at Volunteers of America, Franklin Capital Group, NHP/AIMCO, and Reznick, Fedder & Silverman (now CohnReznick).
McCormack Baron Salazar Adds Team Members
McCormack Baron Salazar has announced the addition of several new team members to the firm’s development team.
Sandra Martin Seals is a senior vice president with oversight of development projects primarily in Florida and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Prior to joining McCormack Baron Salazar, she was acquisitions manager at National Equity Fund and vice president of Reliance Housing Foundation.
LaShunda Gonzalez, senior vice president, comes to McCormack Baron Salazar from Preservation of Affordable Housing, where she was the Choice Neighborhoods director for the Woodlawn Choice Neighborhood in Chicago. She will support development projects across the country, with a focus on mixed-income, mixed-finance communities.
They join senior vice president Sasha-Gaye Angus, who oversees development projects in the Mid-Atlantic region. Prior to joining the firm in 2016, Angus was a vice president at The Michaels Development Co.
J. Keith Brown joins as a vice president of business development. With extensive experience in impactful real estate development, including business analysis, project feasibility, and transit-oriented and affordable development, Brown will lead the business development division to continue to build the company’s pipeline strategically.
Trace Shaughnessy, vice president, will manage several key development projects, including the Dayton Arcade redevelopment in Dayton, Ohio. He is the founder and principal of Shaughnessy Development, a mixed-use and multifamily developer in the St. Louis area, with a deep experience in urban transformation, including housing, historic rehabilitation, and mixed-use projects.
Lindsey Evans, LEED AP BD+C, has joined the company as a project manager supporting the Pittsburgh Choice Neighborhoods project.
AJ Cesena and Sarah Rose have also joined as associate project managers.
McCormack Baron Salazar is one of the nation’s leading developers, managers, and asset managers of economically integrated urban neighborhoods. Since 1973, the firm has been an innovator of community development and urban revitalization in 43 cities, having built more 21,000 homes for families, seniors, and veterans.
CPP Names VP
Michael M. Snowdon, an affordable housing industry veteran, has joined Community Preservation Partners (CPP) as vice president of asset management.
CPP is a developer and rehabilitation specialist with more than 6,500 units in eight states.
An Orange County, Calif., native, Snowdon joins the firm from Highridge Costa Investors where he oversaw a portfolio of more than 275 communities worth more than $3 billion. For CPP, he will be directing the asset management team as it expands into new markets.
Snowdon’s hiring follows two other personnel moves at the company. Earlier this year, CPP executives Seth Gellis and Karen Buckland were each appointed to vice president.
KCG Development Adds VP
Joel Silver has been named a vice president at KCG Development, an affordable housing developer based in Indianapolis. He will be leading development efforts in the Northeast.
Silver joins the firm after 20 years at The Michaels Development Co., where he was a senior vice president, regional vice president, and vice president.
POAH Names General Counsel/Managing Director
Judith S. Jacobson has been named general counsel/managing director at nonprofit Preservation of Affordable Housing, developer and owner of more than 10,000 affordable rental apartments in 11 states and the District of Columbia. She will start in September.
Jacobson has over 30 years of experience in the affordable housing and community development field. She has been the deputy director and general counsel at Massachusetts Housing Partnership since 1996. She has extensive experience in the areas of financing multifamily rental properties, credit enhancement of tax-exempt bonds, first-time homebuyer programs, regulations for mixed finance of public housing, and technical assistance to municipalities. She has spearheaded major innovations in the field of affordable housing, including the development of the One Source loan program for construction and permanent loans and MassDocs, the consolidated closing documents used for all state subsidy loans.
Jacobson replaces W. Bart Lloyd, who is retiring in July after serving as the Boston-based organization’s managing director of acquisitions and general counsel since the company’s early years, following its founding in 2001.
Berkadia Expands HUD Team
Berkadia announced the addition of managing director Laura Saull Smith, an expert in providing financing insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to owners of multifamily and health-care properties. She will be based in the Washington, D.C., metro office.
Saull Smith has more than 30 years of experience underwriting and originating commercial loans and has provided approximately $5 billion in Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and conduit transactions. She specializes in national HUD multifamily and health-care financing, primarily under the LEAN and MAP-insured programs through HUD.
Prior to joining Berkadia, Saull Smith was a senior director at Love Funding, where she was responsible for national multifamily and health-care loan originations.
Joining Saull Smith will be her team members Ann Bolen and Susan Bealmear. Bolen has a strong affordable housing background and spent 27 years at the Virginia Housing Development Authority. Bealmear has an accounting background with experience working for the Federal Reserve Bank. Together this team consistently received annual production awards and closed over $200 million in HUD and bridge loans.
Chase Expands Community Development Team
Cort Gross has joined Chase’s Community Development Banking (CDB) group as a senior commercial banker. He is based in San Francisco.
He has over 25 years of community development financing experience and joins the firm from Self-Help Federal Credit Union, where he originated loans for a variety of community development projects. Previously, he founded a consulting firm specializing in community development, FHA financing, and community asset building, as well as New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) and low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) financing.
Chase’s CDB group provides various financial solutions that support the growth of affordable housing and revitalization of low- and moderate-income communities across the United States, including construction financing, NMTC financing, letters of credit, and other products to support bond financing.
Multifamily Housing Veteran Joins Stifel
John Sabatier has joined Stifel as a managing director in its Public Finance Housing Group. He will be based in the firm’s Baton Rouge, La., office, where he will assist developer clients and issuers across the country.
Sabatier has spent his entire career in the multifamily affordable housing industry. He has more than 20 years of combined experience developing, operating, and financing affordable housing communities. He is a registered securities representative and since 2007 has focused on municipal debt executions, primarily with 4% LIHTCs.
Prior to joining Stifel, Sabatier was a municipal investment banker with RBC Capital Markets, where he closed more than $1.3 billion in transactions, and executive vice president, multifamily housing banker, with JLL, where he helped establish multifamily municipal underwriting as a product execution within JLL Securities.
