AFFORDABLE HOUSING INSTITUTE - Key Persons
Amna Pervaiz's journey at AHI began as an Academic Intern, leading her to her current role as an Analyst. In this capacity, she contributes to AHI's efforts by conducting research, analyzing the housing value chain and assessing housing markets, engaging with stakeholders, and providing impactful consulting services.
Amna's commitment to housing as a fundamental right stems from her experiences witnessing urban socioeconomic inequities, lack of access to housing services, and the absence of essential care that worsens living conditions for vulnerable groups. She believes affordable housing should be marked by inclusivity, innovation, flexibility, and sustainability. This awareness took root during her involvement in documenting squatter settlements in her hometown.
She has been part of diverse projects across Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Her involvement spans Public-Private Partnership projects to mortgage finance and housing policy initiatives. Amna also excels in housing finance and supports AHI's valuation services. Furthermore, she's developing her expertise as an in-house trainee in Islamic Finance.
Amna holds a Master in Urban Planning degree from Harvard University, specializing in Housing, Community, and Economic Development, through the Fulbright Scholarship. Her academic pursuits focused on affordable housing policy in developing contexts, particularly urban governance in disaster risk management and community participation in flood-prone areas of Pakistan. She also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the National College of Arts in Pakistan.
Amna is a native Urdu speaker, fluent in English, and familiar with Arabic and Punjabi. She's currently learning French. Beyond AHI, she enjoys traveling, drawing, and practicing yoga.
Job Titles:
- Senior Analyst
- AHI As a Senior Analyst
Anushka Shahdadpuri joined AHI as a Senior Analyst, where she is involved in advancing accessibility to low-income affordable housing. She believes adequate housing is a fundamental right is deeply rooted in her experiences growing up in a Sindhi refugee colony in Ulhasnagar, Mumbai. Witnessing urban socioeconomic inequities and the lack of access to essential housing services has driven her passion for establishing Aamchi, a grassroots community-based organization focused on promoting participatory housing redevelopment in India.
In the past, she has worked on multi-sectoral projects across South Asia, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and North America on issues of housing affordability, climate policy, and sustainable real estate, with significant contributions to public-private partnership initiatives and housing policy development. At AHI, she is currently focused on strategic growth advising and housing market assessments in Trinidad and Tobago, while also developing the Chrysalis Housing Impact Accelerator.
Anushka holds a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where her studies emphasized disaster risk reduction, international climate resilience, and the role of international multilateral and humanitarian organizations in mitigating climate Anthropocene. She also earned her Bachelor's degree in Architecture from India. Beyond work, she enjoys dancing Kathak, learning to swim, whipping up new recipes, lifting weights, and mapping out her next adventure.
Anya Brickman Raredon has been with AHI since 2013 and has been instrumental in developing AHI into a dynamic organization with global reach and impact. Anya directs AHI projects worldwide including strategic planning with affordable housing entities, designing affordable housing strategies, analyzing housing affordability, mapping housing value chains, and developing financial models to provide access to housing finance for low-income families.
Her passion for this work is driven by a desire to leverage physical, legal, financial, economic, and social systems to provide stable and affordable housing solutions to populations in need.
Anya leads AHI's work in formalizing and redeveloping informal settlements and post-disaster urban areas, directs AHI's Thought Leadership initiatives and collaborations with academic institutions, including Harvard and MIT, and mentors the team.
She previously served as Oxfam America's Shelter and Settlements Coordinator in Port-au-Prince, designing the strategic operational plan for the Haiti Shelter Program, creating a pilot housing program, and conducting several case studies on post-earthquake housing projects. She also served as the Haiti Projects Manager at the Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT and has worked extensively on community-based reconstruction strategies in post-earthquake Haiti.
Anya received a Master's in City Planning from MIT in 2011 and a BA from Yale in 2004 with Honors in Architecture. She also holds certificates in International Law and International Humanitarian Law from the Université Catholique de Louvain through EdX, and a certificate in International Housing Finance from the Wharton School of Business. She has a working knowledge of Spanish and a basic understanding of French and Haitian Kreyol. When she is not working hard at solving low-income housing challenges, she can be found choreographing dances.
Job Titles:
- Senior Project Manager
- AHI As a Senior Project Manager
- Senior Project Manager / US
Campbell Mayer is an innovative housing practitioner with relentless passion for addressing the affordable housing crisis in challenging emerging markets. He began confronting housing equity and affordability as an architect in Colorado, planning and developing worker housing as a P.U.D. of the last platted community in the Eagle River corridor. In Central America, Campbell coordinated H4H projects and managed crews building biogas digesters in rural farming communities.
Campbell was the first male hired into a women's empowerment NGO based in Kampala, Uganda where he began a community collaboration process that led to the acquisition of land, master planning, construction and operation of a 147unit multi-ethnic village over a 4year period that boosted the number of women land owners in the country. After a successful project in Uganda, but failing to upscale the NGO housing model, Campbell attended MIT's DUSP program where he adapted social entrepreneurship skills into launching a for-profit housing development and advisory company based in Accra, Ghana.
While at MIT, Campbell co-founded a field learning laboratory for poverty economics in collaboration with MIT's Center for Real Estate and institutions in Durban, South Africa to research informal value creation and empower community entrepreneurship initiatives. For more than a decade, Campbell created development partnerships with local developers and initiated new development strategies to capture value in market opportunities as well as creating solutions to address market failures. The successes and failures Campbell experienced in Africa led to his focus on consultancy and capacity building with local housing developers to create stable conditions for offshore investments that upscale the delivery of affordable housing.
Campbell joined AHI as a Senior Project Manager to advance smart and viable pathways to upscaling affordable housing solutions in emerging markets across the Earth.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Associate Director of the Massachusetts Department of Housing & Community Development
- Associate Director or Acting Assistant Secretary of the Department
- Associate Director, Department of Housing and Community Development
Kate Racer is an Associate Director of the Massachusetts Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD). Her primary responsibility is the department's Division of Housing Development, which oversees the allocation of low-income housing tax credits and the distribution of state HOME funds, as well as the distribution of funds through several state housing production programs. The department annually allocates approximately $12 million in tax credits and $12 million in state HOME funds to all four HOME program types.
Kate has served as associate director or acting assistant secretary of the Department for the past thirteen years. Prior to assuming her current position, she was director of the state's affordable homeownership program and special assistant to the Governor's Cabinet Secretary for housing. She currently serves on the boards of the Washington-based Council of State Community Development Agencies (COSDA) and the Boston-based Massachusetts Community Partnership Fund.
A graduate of Carleton College with a master's degree from the University of Chicago, Kate taught middle school and high school for ten years in Chicago and New York before moving to Boston and joining a development company specializing in Section 8 substantial rehabilitation projects. After five years in the private sector, Kate accepted a position at the state agency where she still works.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Senior Advisor
- Advisor, Federal Policy
Senior Advisor Conrad Egan provides comprehensive knowledge of the US affordable housing ecosystem. Based in Washington, DC, Conrad maintains AHI's continuous presence in the nation's capital.
Conrad started his affordable housing career in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s, and later spent twenty years with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in various senior positions, both in the field and at HUD headquarters. Conrad also worked as Executive Vice President at NHP, Inc., then the largest owner and manager of affordable rental homes in the US. Conrad has also served as the Policy Director and President CEO of the National Housing Conference and the Executive Director of the congressionally chartered Millennial Housing Commission. Conrad now serves in voluntary positions, mainly in the Washington, DC area. He is Chairman of the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority, and formerly Chairman of the Fairfax County Affordable Housing Action and Advisory Committee.
Conrad currently serves on the board of the Community Preservation and Development Corporation, a non-profit which operates affordable housing units in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Conrad is also a board member of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, Housing Virginia, AHOME, and the Affordable Housing Conference of Montgomery County.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor, Resilience
With 20+ years' experience in resilience, recovery, and risk management in high-density urban built environments with clients that have included UN Habitat, UN-IOM, Build Change, Haven International, and Architectes de l'Urgence, Dave Hampton combines architectural, interpersonal, real estate development and financial expertise to deliver impact in locations as challenging and complex as Haiti, Chicago, and Cuba.At AHI he connects developed-world capacity to authentic neighborhood-up initiatives that enable groups of people to take charge of their own community's resilience, recovery, and revitalization.
Dave's baptism of fire in resilience came in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, where on behalf of Architecture for Humanity and then J/P Haitian Relief Organization, he managed a complex portfolio of urgent stabilization and recovery projects aiding the voluntary relocation of 55,000 displaced people.As part of this, he led an interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers, planners, and construction specialists on ‘Haiti Helping People Home'.This community-based program in multi-hazard (earthquake, hurricane, urban ravine flash flooding) disaster risk management and recovery delivered safe and permanent homes for 97 families, plus schools, community centers, and health clinics serving over 800 people weekly.Expanding on this work, Dave engaged an extensive network of disaster recovery stakeholders and conceived and secured $1.1 million from the German development agency GIZ to fund a flood hazard mitigation project with the World Bank Natural Hazards Assessment Team to build ravine-stabilizing retaining walls to save lives, protect property, and strengthen the local community.
After fifteen years in the field, Dave returned to academia for a Harvard Graduate School of Design Masters of Design Studies in Risk and Resilience.Since then he has turned desire for change into structured action though writing for multiple publications, such as his Lessons from the California Fires: Climate Change Impacts and Proactive Planning for Planetizen; and speaking at dozens of venues including Habitat III in Quito.Talks have included "Post-Maria Puerto Rico" and "Community Resilience: The Role of Design" for the Boston Society of Architects, whose Committee on Resilient Environments - which he co-chairs - focuses on climate adaptation and coastal resilience.Because housing is the infrastructure of people, housing ecosystem ramifications range from the physical and tactile (elevating buildings, wet/dry floodproofing, passive survivability) to the intangible essentials of financial and policy frameworks (transfer of development rights, managed retreat, housing as critical infrastructure).
A FEMA Emergency Response Official Contractor, Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program Certified Provider, Passive House Certified Consultant, and LEED AP, he holds a Bachelor's in Architecture from Virginia Tech, is fluent in English and Spanish, converses in Haitian Creole, and is increasingly able to understand Bostonian.
David A. Smith is the founder and CEO of the Affordable Housing Institute. He is a much sought-after expert on affordable housing issues around the world. With 45 years of experience in affordable housing, David uniquely combines the roles of practitioner and theoretician, participant, and policymaker in the affordable housing sector.
His work as an international housing finance policy advisor and program developer spans projects in more than 50 countries across 5 continents.
Stateside, David's impressive portfolio achievements includes providing high-quality analysis to the US Congress, the Millennial Housing Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, among others. He was also a principal member of the 1996 Senate mark-to-market working group.
David is also founder and Chairman of Recap Real Estate Advisors, a national expert in complex affordable housing transactions, including public housing revitalization via the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program.
A 1975 Harvard graduate, David is also an award-winning author with more than 400 published articles in real estate, valuation, and policy periodicals, a textbook, as well as an influential blog. He has received multiple awards, including NAHRO's Lange Award and NH&RA's Vision Award for lifetime achievement in affordable housing. David has also authored the Marathon science fiction trilogy.
Job Titles:
- Vice President
- Vice President / Boston
Davina Wood joined AHI in 2018 and now serves as the firm's Vice President. Davina specializes in affordable housing finance, management, and strategy in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the United States. In addition to her day-to-day leadership and mentoring of the team, Davina frequently runs international consulting projects and is involved in AHI's LIHTC transaction valuation work as well. Davina's work is driven by her desire to apply her 12 years of experience in the financial sector to emerging affordable housing markets in complex contexts.
While at AHI, she has led various projects, including a market study and sales feasibility analysis for a private sector developer seeking to build Senegal's largest affordable housing development. She recently completed an affordable housing PPP pre-feasibility assessment for the IFC in the Solomon Islands and is currently working on developing housing finance solutions for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Renewal in Jamaica.
Davina has considerable experience in Ethiopia, having drafted a report on long term finance in Ethiopia for AfDB and GIZ, and having completed a project with the World Bank in Ethiopia, where the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing requested the World Bank's assistance with land management and housing delivery. She also participated in an additional, follow-on project to identify sustainable solutions for the provision of housing for the country's Industrial Parks.
Prior to AHI, she worked at JPMorgan's Community Development Bank, where she underwrote debt on LIHTC projects and managed a portfolio of construction and permanent loans.
Davina holds an MIA in International Finance and Monetary Theory from Columbia University and a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. She is fluent in English and Spanish, and proficient in French. When she isn't working, Davina enjoys life in the English countryside with her husband and two small children.
Job Titles:
- Director of Chrysalis
- Director of Chrysalis / UK
- Distinguished Housing Finance Executive
- Senior Director of MBA 's International Division
Debra L. Erb is a distinguished housing finance executive with over 30 years of experience in international housing and real estate finance. Debra recently completed 21 years of service as the Managing Director of Social Infrastructure at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC, formerly OPIC)), where she led a global team in the origination of housing and real estate transactions. Under her leadership, DFC committed more than $2.5 billion across 50+ debt transactions in 31 countries, supporting various financing models, including construction finance, mortgage financing, and securitization. Her work with DFC has empowered organizations and individuals worldwide to implement innovative housing finance solutions.
Debra's career is marked by a strong commitment to education and capacity-building in the housing finance industry. She began her career in mortgage banking, gaining hands-on experience across mortgage origination, secondary marketing, and underwriting. She then transitioned to roles focused on education, serving as the Senior Director of the Education Department at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA), where she was responsible for key programs such as the School of Mortgage Banking and the Certified Mortgage Banker designation. Debra developed and managed educational content, distance learning, and certification programs that have trained thousands of professionals in the U.S. and abroad.
As Senior Director of MBA's International Division, Debra expanded her impact by designing and delivering tailored training programs for international markets, including Algeria, Indonesia, and Latin America. Her work involved developing courses that addressed the unique challenges of mortgage finance in emerging markets, conducting technical assistance, and facilitating workshops for lenders, bankers, and government officials. She also played a crucial role in organizing international conferences and trade missions that brought together global leaders in housing finance.
Before joining DFC, Debra was the President of Societas - International Institute for Real Estate Finance, a nonprofit she founded to provide technical assistance, research, and education in global housing finance. She led all aspects of program development, including creating curricula, facilitating case studies, and conducting training programs that enhanced the operational and risk management capabilities of financial institutions in developing countries.
Debra is also an accomplished public speaker and active participant in international housing finance initiatives. She has served on several boards, including D.C. Habitat for Humanity and the Home Builders Institute in the U.S. and has recently been appointed to the Advisory Council of Shelter Afrique Development Bank and the Board of Trustees of Green City Homes International, based in the U.K. She is also an active member of the African Union for Housing Finance.
Debra holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration with a concentration in International Non-Profit Management and has completed executive programs at Georgetown University, the U.S. Treasury Executive Institute, and Tuck Business School at Dartmouth.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Senior Vice President ( Global Engagements ) UK
Derek Long advises AHI's work on housing associations and the UK and European housing market. Currently a Co-Director of AHI's Rehousing Ukraine Initiative, Mr. Long has been an AHI advisor since 2013, representing AHI as a speaker at Korea's first Housing Finance Conference, and before that as a significant contributor to AHI's landmark comparison of US non-profits and UK housing associations, Mission Entrepreneurial Entities.
An economist educated at Exeter College, Oxford with over 30 years' experience in housing, as investor, regulator, policy maker, consultant, and non-executive, Derek has worked in Whitehall, the European Institute for Urban Affairs, the UK's housing regulator (then called the Housing Corporation), and as the northern head of the National Housing Federation. He defined and codified the UK's housing plus doctrine, stating that housing associations can use resources for non-housing activities to support the sustainability of social housing, and was also an advisor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the multi-billion-pound national program to regenerate low demand housing communities.
In addition to his degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, Derek also has diplomas from the University of Lancaster Management School and the University of Warwick. He is an experienced national broadcaster and writer, and contributes questions to the BBC's "most fiendish quiz".
Dustin Thomas joins AHI as the operations manager. He manages the day-to-day logistics including office management, data management, IT management, human resources, and business management.
Dustin graduated with a B.S. in Business Technology and Management from Vermont Technical College. While completing his undergraduate degree, Dustin first started working in the nonprofit sector as an instructor for machine tool technology and advanced manufacturing.
Dustin has 10+ years working in nonprofit roles varying from instructor, project leader, office manager, business manager and IT manager. He has worked for organizations specializing in workforce development, to community targeted social impact work, as well as secondary and post-secondary education.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- President and CEO of the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation
- President and CEO, Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation
Joe Flatley is President and CEO of the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation (MHIC). He has led the organization since it was founded in 1990 as a private non-profit whose mission is to be an innovative financier of affordable housing and community development, with a focus on ensuring that the benefits of that investment flows to the residents and the businesses in the communities in which the projects are located. Over the eighteen year period since its inception, MHIC has invested over $1.2 billion in 300 projects - for the creation of more than 12,500 units of affordable housing. MHIC finances community development projects and has received five allocations of New Markets Tax Credits totalling $364 million.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Director, Valuation
Joshua Anderson, Associate, applies his financial modeling and coding skills to complex financial structures to support AHI projects. He has designed and coded the Entity-Level Financial Model (ELFP) for the Abu Dhabi Housing Authority (ADHA), providing an integral tool for projecting funding requirements for its four interrelated divisions. He also designed and coded a model which allows ADHA to value its portfolio of subsidized loans.
Joshua has served as a senior underwriter for Boston Capital, underwriting affordable housing projects funded with the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. He has also been a senior finance director for several real estate development firms including Carpenter & Company and Cathartes Investments. While at Carpenter and Company, he coded the model for a complex capitalization structure which included a long-term participating ground lease, a multi-tiered joint-venture agreement with a tax-exempt lead equity partner, and a taxpaying special partner taking advantage of historic tax credits. While at Cathartes, he brought Portwalk, an urban mixed-use project, through schematic design with full entitlements ahead of schedule. Entitlements included Historic District Commission approval, Planning Board approval, the negotiation of a public-private subsurface garage agreement and an urban private street agreement.
A native of Massachusetts, Joshua holds a Master's of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Real Estate Development. His thesis focused on the capital structure of real estate investment trusts as they matured in the public equity markets. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from St. Lawrence University. Joshua currently teaches classes on the economics of real estate development at Boston University, where he is an instructor at its center for continuing education, and Wentworth Institute of Technology, where he is an adjunct professor in the Master's Degree in Construction Management program.
Job Titles:
- Architect
- Senior Affordable Housing Expert
- Senior Affordable Housing Expert / Boston
Larry is a developmental entrepreneur, investor, and senior executive with 35 years of experience in urban and housing development and investment across 37 countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. He has worked from the ground up and the top down, across the public-private spectrum, and his knowledge and expertise span the value chain-from policy through planning, financing, and implementation - encompassing architecture, urban design, spatial-investment modelling, institutional structuring for investment and development, and the management of housing and urban settlements.
Prior to AHI, Larry worked for Urbuntu, focusing on building housing enterprises, one of which is Placemakers in Kenya, which structures social housing through SPVs. This work provided the foundation for advising development banks and financial institutions in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Indonesia, India, and Ukraine on development, investment, and public-private modalities, including PPPs.
Before Urbuntu, Larry was the CEO of Reall (Real Equity for All), a non-profit seed investor in approximately 15 housing development enterprises (HDEs). During his tenure, Reall built a loan book of $60 million and successfully produced housing and settlements across 65 cities in Africa and Asia, leveraging an asset value of $0.6 billion.
Prior to this, Larry was the CEO of Homeless International, where one of his notable achievements was the Community-Led Infrastructure Finance Facility, which was awarded the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour in 2013.
A native of South Africa, Larry was involved in multiple post-apartheid reconstruction and development programs focused on urban upgrading and housing. The most significant of these was Nelson Mandela's Cato Manor Urban Renewal Project, which was recognized as a UN "International Best Practice" in 2000. Larry also co-founded Habitat for Humanity in South Africa and later served on the International Board of Habitat for Humanity. He had the privilege of inviting, organizing, and directing the Jimmy Carter Work Project in South Africa in 2002.
Larry is an architect, urban planner, and designer by profession, with further education in International Housing Finance and Real Estate from Wharton and SBS Oxford, respectively. As an advocate for bridging practice and theory, he has served as an adjunct professor at Eastern University, Pennsylvania, and has taught part-time at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Natal, Pretoria, Free State, and Cambridge, as well as contributing a case study at Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Co - Founder and Board Member, Re - Pie Real Estate Portfolio Management
M. Emre Çamlıbel has 25 years of experience in project management and business development primarily focusing on the real estate sector. He has worked both in the US and Turkey in positions ranging from field engineer to CEO.
M. Emre Çamlıbel served as board member of the Turkish Real Estate Investment Trusts Foundation (GYODER), Turkish Home Builders' Association (KONUTDER), and Istanbul Constructor's Association (İNDER).
M. Emre Çamlıbel holds a MS degree in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BS degree in Civil Engineering from the Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul. He has a PhD degree from Istanbul Bogazici University and published articles on the areas of energy efficiency and savings optimisation modelling, energy systems and sustainability, as well as urban transformation structural modelling and financing.
He is a part time professor at Bogazici University Civil Engineering department in addition to his Partner Associate Professor position at VGTU in Lithuania, and a frequent guest lecturer at MIT, Berkeley, UTSA and Columbia University.
He is a founding shareholder and board member of a real estate fund management company and independent board member of several international companies. He worked as the CEO of Soyak Holding before that for 8 years.
Senior Advisor Manal Shalaby brings 32 years of extensive affordable housing experience to AHI. With her expertise, Manal makes significant contributions to AHI projects in housing policy, Islamic funding structure, housing microfinance, investment promotion, and financial analysis.
Prior to joining AHI, Manal worked with a USAID program as Lead Technical and Senior Financial Advisor to develop a private-sector non-banking finance industry in Egypt. She worked closely with Egypt's Mortgage Finance Authority to strengthen the institution and to develop and implement a strategic business plan. She worked to introduce traditional mortgage finance products alongside Islamic finance alternative products, and she contributed to the regulations and business plan for the first Mortgage Refinance Company. Manal also completed the due diligence assessments of Egyptian non-bank financial regulators before a merger between Capital Market Authority, Mortgage Finance Authority, Insurance Authority and Micro Finance. Earlier in her career, Manal consumer protection policies for Egypt's Capital Market Authority. She led a team as a Corporate Finance Partner at KPMG, and as a Senior Manager at Deloitte, Touche, and Arthur Andersen.
Manal is an MBA graduate of the American University in Cairo, and has her Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Administration. She is also an accredited personal trainer and has received specialized training in numerous international programs, including Wharton's International Housing Finance Program. She is fluent in English and Arabic.
Job Titles:
- Senior Project Manager
- Senior Project Manager / Boston
Margaux Morenas started her AHI journey as an intern in 2018 and has since graduated to the role of Senior Project Manager. During her studies, Margaux developed a strong interest in urban governance and informality leading to her further specializing in housing and urban planning policies in African and Middle Eastern cities.
Margaux plays a key role in supporting AHI's consulting and research work focusing primarily on housing policy solutions, housing market assessments, and housing value-chain analysis. She has worked on a wide spectrum of projects spanning housing microfinance to affordable housing PPP throughout Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America. She has also worked on the development and testing a tool to measure affordable and socially sustainable housing developments.
Prior to AHI, she worked with the French Cultural Institute in Botswana and the EU delegation in Namibia.
Margaux graduated with a Master's degree from the Urban School at Sciences Po Paris in 2018. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and African Studies also from Sciences Po Paris. As part of her studies, she also conducted a 6-month mission for a multi-disciplinary firm based in Paris and specializing in urban project design, developing policy recommendations for Smart Cities and data governance in the Middle East.
Outside of work, Margaux loves traveling and discovering new places. She speaks French, English, and Portuguese.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor, Middle East & Africa
Mounia's regional expertise helps AHI to successfully execute projects ranging from consulting work to educational study tours for clients. Mounia began working with AHI in 2009 as a graduate student interested in slum rehabilitation and financing. Since 2017, she has acted as one of AHI's key associates in the Middle East, acting as the Regional Manager for the Middle East and Africa.
Mounia has worked for the International Finance Corporation and for the United Nations Development Program, specializing in human development issues. Mounia also worked for Al Omrane, the Moroccan government's primary housing and urban development agency. Her expertise in Moroccan housing policy analysis and implementation stems in part from her background in public policy, which gave her experience analyzing the impact of affordable housing policies and public-private partnerships throughout Morocco.
Mounia holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in business administration and finance from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. She is fluent in French and English, and is a native Moroccan Arabic speaker. Mounia has lived in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Switzerland, France, Morocco, and the U.S.
Nadia began her internship at AHI in January 2025. Her work focuses on researching and analyzing housing value chains and housing policies, particularly in Latin America.
Her interest in housing consolidated during her participation in the Public Policy Incubator in Sciences Po, where she collaborated with COFOR ALEC 83 (Agence des politiques énergétiques du Var) on a project aimed at mobilizing private resources to protect housing units against forest fires in the Var region of southern France. This experience highlighted how a secure shelter is essential for recovery and resilience in affected communities. Additionally, it provided her with valuable experience in research on public policies. Nadia is interested in the role access to housing plays in the well-being of vulnerable population groups, including low-income households, children, women, and migrants.
Previously, she worked on the OECD-UNDP joint initiative Tax Inspectors Without Borders, which helps developing countries strengthen their tax audit capacity. In this role, she liaised with stakeholders and tax administrations worldwide-particularly from Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, Mexico, and the United Kingdom-conducted research, and drafted communication materials. She also spent a year as a Communications Consultant in the OECD's Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS), which leads the organization's work on employment, social policies, international migration, and health.
Nadia is completing a master's degree in public policy with a specialization in Social Policy and Social Innovation at SciencesPo's School of Social Affairs in Paris. In 2022, she earned a bachelor's degree in Translation and Social Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
In her free time, she enjoys traveling and dancing. She speaks English, French and Spanish.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Nancy has over 30 years' experience in the community development field and is the former President and CEO of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). In addition to her work at LIIF, she serves on numerous boards and committees, including Bank of America's National Community Advisory Council, Morgan Stanley's Community Development Advisory Committee, Capital One's Community Advisory Council and the National Housing Law Project. She was also previously a member of the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council, the Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation's Office of Program-Related Investments, the Chief Financial Officer of the International Water Management Institute, and an independent consultant on community development, social investment, financial analysis and housing policy. She consulted for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. She received an M.S. in Urban Planning with a concentration in Real Estate Finance from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor, Latin America and Caribbean
- AHI 's Regional Associate
In his capacity as AHI's Regional Associate, Noel assists in the exploration of hybrid value chain collaborations for housing development in Nicaragua. He currently works to develop a comprehensive housing ecosystem for Nicaragua. Noel first joined AHI as Central America research intern, during which experience he worked in establishing AHI's network and presence in Nicaragua with major stakeholders in housing provision, research of Nicaragua's housing delivery system, and establishment of a business development strategy for the region.
Noel Sampson's commitment to sustainable development and affordable housing has traced his path through many countries, including Vietnam, Mongolia, Switzerland and Palestine. His strong social awareness, cultural sensitivity and his work in community development projects in Nicaragua have granted him with several fellowships including the Netherlands Fellowship Program and the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Master Program scholarship. This has led him to achieve advanced education in housing development and management and development programs management at Lund University (LTH) in Sweden, MDF in the Netherlands, TU Darmstadt in Germany, UIC in Barcelona and the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
Noel has developed a research to improve climate change resilience of poor urban communities in Vietnamese and Nicaraguan cities, worked with the UN-Habitat office in Mongolia on slum upgrading programs of the Ger areas of Ulaanbaatar, worked with Campus in Camps, the renown experimental program in Palestinian refugee camps. Noel supported the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe UNECE, based in Geneva, Switzerland, in the formulation of the Coastal Cities Initiative and organized the Workshop "Building resilient communities through urban planning and the integration of the Natural Sciences" held on January 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland.
During his early work in Nicaragua as architect and development practitioner he worked with several nonprofit organizations such as the Center for Studies and Social Promotion (CEPS) and Bridges to Community on community development projects such as agriculture, public health, sustainable architecture, water and sanitation, and supporting local farmers' trading. Noel's series of sustainable architecture projects includes affordable housing, alternative solutions for health infrastructure, and educational buildings such as libraries, multi-use classrooms and sustainable rural schools whose designs have been replicated and built in different municipalities in Nicaragua.
Born in Nicaragua, Noel holds a double Master degree in International Cooperation and Urban Development from the Technological University of Darmstadt, Germany as part of the European Union-sponsored MUNDUS URBANO and a Master degree on Sustainable Emergency Architecture of the International University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. Additionally, he holds a specialization certificate on assessment and management of geological and climate related risks from the University of Geneva (CERG-C). Noel is co-founder and director of Emerge and the Dev Studio. He is fluent in both English and Spanish.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Founder of Reese Fayde & Associates
- Principal, Reese Fayde and Associates
Reese Fayde is the founder of Reese Fayde & Associates, a management consulting firm in New York City that provides technical assistance to community-based non-profit organizations in the development and operation of low and moderate income housing.
A housing expert with more than 25 years of experience, she most recently served as the first CEO of Living Cities in New York, a partnership of leading foundations, financial institutions and the federal government that is committed to improving the vitality of cities and urban neighborhoods.
Her long background in community development includes positions with Urban Strategies, Ltd., the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency and Real Estate Enterprises, Inc. She has also lectured at both Harvard and Tufts and provided training seminars nationally.
Job Titles:
- Senior Project Manager
- Senior Project Manager / Brazil
Sanjana Sidhra started at AHI as an intern and today is a Senior Project Manager working out of the Boston office. In her position, she supports AHI's mission of equitable and affordable housing by way of research, analysis, management, and consulting.
Brought up in Mumbai - a land-scarce high-density metropolis - Sanjana's interest in housing stems from having seen the disparity that exists between informal and formal urban settlements, and the impact that has on city dwellers. Her approach embodies her foundational belief that housing is core to an individual's social mobility.
Since becoming a full-time member of the team in 2020, Sanjana's work has been primarily focused on AHI's Health Secure Housing initiative in the United States. In the international realm, she supports AHI's impact consulting working in Guyana, Vietnam, India, and The Philippines. Sanjana also supports senior staff's work with SEWA Grih Rin, a high-impact, women-centric, and pro-poor housing finance company in India. She is also AHI's in-house gender-expert in training.
She previously worked with the Urban Design Research Institute in India to document and analyze government policy initiatives for the supply of housing in the country since its independence in 1947.
Sanjana is a graduate of Cornell University where she earned her Master's in City and Regional Planning with a concentration in International Planning and Development. There, she conducted research on common-property resource management to increase the climate resilience of indigenous fishing villages along the coast of Mumbai. She also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Mumbai University in India.
She speaks Hindi natively and English proficiently. When she is not supporting AHI's housing consulting activities, Sanjana likes to host and cook for friends and family.
Santiago Mendía is LatAm Regional Manager at AHI, born in Chile, with a bachelor's degree in management and economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile and a master's degree in Public Policy specialized in Social Policies from Sciences Po, Paris.
Santiago has an extensive career linked to the housing sector. He began his professional journey in a family real estate business, followed by experience in the international NGO Fútbol Más, working in vulnerable neighborhoods across Chile. In 2019, he joined the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism of Chile (MINVU) as a junior advisor to Deputy Minister Guillermo Rolando, where he was responsible for identifying and managing the most critical social housing projects in Chile. During this three-year experience, alongside his primary task of project management, he was involved in various aspects of the Ministry, such as monitoring the Ministry's performance, preparing budgetary proposals to the Ministry of Finance to increase MINVU's budget, evaluating the rise in construction materials costs during the pandemic, and assisting in the development of new social housing projects, among other activities.
Additionally, at the beginning of 2022, he joined the NGO Déficit Cero as a research advisor, where he was in charge of developing a new periodic report on the status of the housing sector in Chile, which continues to be published every three months by the organization. He also studied the housing deficit in the country. Concurrently, he conducted a study on the evolution of social housing demand and supply from 2017 to 2022 at a local level, analyzing the gap in each of the 345 municipalities of the country, publishing a document, and holding a seminar with regional and local authorities.
After arriving in Paris and starting his studies at Sciences Po, Santiago joined the Social Policy Division at the OECD, where he worked with the housing and homelessness team, conducting research on affordable housing, updating and refining the Affordable Housing Database, and analyzing specific countries and cities. He also contributed to the development of the Policy Toolkit to Combat Homelessness.
Following this experience, Santiago joined AHI as an intern, becoming the LatAm Regional Manger, developing projects primarily in Latin America.
Outside of work, Santiago loves sports and traveling. He speaks Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.
Sara Veronesi started her journey at AHI in early 2022 as an intern and today serves the organization as an Analyst. Her work at AHI involves research and analysis of housing value chains and housing policies.
Sara has always had a strong interest in urban contexts, and the deep socio-economic inequalities they often create. Overtime, she has become increasingly aware of the fundamental role of affordable housing in reducing these inequalities. Through her work, she hopes to develop locally adaptable housing solutions that contribute access to housing, especially for vulnerable groups.
Since her arrival at AHI, Sara has collaborated on a variety of projects and has been involved in a wide spectrum of AHI's consulting activities. She has worked with the International Finance Corporation on a project aimed at increasing property ownership by women in Vietnam, by focusing on the legal, financial, and socio-cultural barriers they face. She was also an integral member of the team which created the Rehousing Ukraine Initiative, which included the Rehousing Ukraine virtual conference series- a series of panel discussions on the challenges and potential solutions for the reconstruction of Ukraine's housing sector at the end of the war.
Sara graduated with a Master's degree in Urban Governance from the Urban School of Science Po Paris in 2022. In 2020, she also earned a Bachelor's in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Milan. During her studies at Sciences Po, she participated in a research project which produced a report on indicators of community wellbeing beyond GDP to inform public policies, commissioned by the Parisian Urbanism Agency (APUR).
Sara is an Italian native who also speaks English and French. She is passionate about music and visiting new places.
Shweta has resided in multiple cities across India such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. Living in a highly dense and unequal built environments has rooted her interests and practice of architecture and urban planning in spatial justice and equity. Her past experience includes working with National Disaster Management Authority on post-disaster temporary shelter policies, conducting mason training programs, researching economic and socio-spatial issues in Mumbai's informal settlements, technical capacity building for rural housing finance customers, and designing learning centres in the tribal regions of Gujarat. Her work has been linked to various forms of housing provision and development, which she continues to explore in various contexts around the world. At AHI, Shweta has been involved with developing affordable housing programs and housing PPP models in Kyrgyzstan, Vanuatu, and Uganda.
Shweta graduated as an architect from School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, and completed her Master of Urban and Regional Planning at University of California, Los Angeles. For her capstone project, Shweta explored policy options to support housing production and density in high opportunities and exclusionary neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
She speaks Hindi, English and Tamil proficiently. Outside of AHI, she enjoys running, playing badminton, and painting watercolors.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Co - Founder and Managing Director, Charlesbank Capital Partners, LLC
Prior to co-founding Charlesbank in 1998, Tim was a managing director of Harvard Private Capital Group, the firm's predecessor. He joined Harvard Private Capital in 1990. Previously, Tim was with The Field Corporation, a private equity firm based in Chicago, where he was responsible for private investments in the media and communications industries. Before that, he practiced law for several years with Sidley & Austin, Chicago, primarily in the areas of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions.
Tim serves on the boards of CIFC, Peacock Engineering, Princeton Review and TLC Vision. He holds a bachelor's degree from Purdue University, a JD from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
A native of St. Louis, Tim and his wife live in Weston, MA, and have three children.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Director of Housing for the Portland Development Commission
- Principal Consultant at Neighborhood Wealth
Wyman began his career at the first Community Development Bank in the nation, South Shore Bank in Chicago in 1978 and later as the first Executive Director of the Westside Conservation Corp., a community development corporation in Milwaukee, Wi. that focused on housing counseling and acquiring vacant properties, restoring them and selling the renovated homes to first time home buyers. Wyman spent 14 years at WHEDA as a Senior Manager, first in the Multifamily Group and later heading the Emerging Markets Group.
In 2001, Wyman became the Director of Housing for the Portland Development Commission and later Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. During his tenure, he completed the creation of the city's 11 th urban renewal district, the Willamette Industrial URA. It opened up hundreds of vacant acres for industrial redevelopment. Among the many projects, Wyman was involved in includes the $110 million mixed-use RiverPlace development on a 2.7-acre site located on the west bank of the Willamette River. RiverPlace featured 222 condos and ground-level townhomes, a destination waterfront restaurant, retail and live/workspaces, and a public parking garage. I completed the city's most significant goal to retain and renovate the historic Meier & Frank department store in downtown Portland. The $115 million redevelopment, many years in the making included significant earthquake remediation, a 300 room Marriott Hotel and the lower floors contained a renovated state of the art department store.
In 2007 I became the Deputy Director of Tax Allocation Districts (TADs) for the Atlanta Development Authority. I established the city's first commercial and retail Tax Allocation Districts (TADs) in the city's older inner city retail corridors. I created the City of Atlanta's New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) program with a focus on the revitalization of the city's underdeveloped neighborhood retail corridors and the Central Business District.
I obtained two NMTC awards of $80 million and created the Atlanta Emerging Markets, Inc., (AEM) a Community Development Entity, certified by the US Treasury to focus on redevelopment and creation of family-wage jobs in the city's four commercial TADs and Priority Corridors. I financed the first NMTC redevelopment in Atlanta's Aerotropolis, a new multimodal air transit hub adjacent to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. I closed a $30 million mezzanine loan as part of a $69 million land development and solar parking structure in the Aerotropolis district.
For eight years, 2011 to 2019, Wyman served as the Executive Director of Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), a multi-billion-dollar state housing authority that supports the development of affordable housing and fosters business growth and job creation. Under Wyman's leadership, WHEDA invested over $2.8 billion in Wisconsin for over 24,000 units of affordable housing; created new programs to help over 457 small businesses and farmers; awarded $308 million in New Market Tax Credits that supported 23 developments that created jobs and provide catalytic economic development investment in low-income Wisconsin communities; and reestablished WHEDA as a mortgage lender to low- and moderate-income home buyers after the last recession.