Our Board of Directors

Erika Poethig, Chair 
Executive Vice President for Strategy and Planning, Civic Committee and Commercial Club of Chicago; Member of the Illinois Housing Development Authority

Erika Poethig is Executive Vice President for Strategy and Planning at Civic Committee and Commercial Club of Chicago. In consultation with Civic Committee and Commercial Club members and senior executive leadership, Poethig leads the development and execution of a comprehensive strategic framework and action plan. From 2021-2023, Poethig was the Special Assistant to the President for Housing and Urban Policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council. In this capacity, she led interagency policy development on the housing and community development components of the President’s Build Back agenda. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, she served as Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the Urban Institute, where she created and led the Research to Action Lab, an innovation hub serving decision-makers and creative thinkers eager to effect social change. Before joining Urban, Poethig was Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. During her tenure in the Obama administration, she was also Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and was a leading architect of the White House Council for Strong Cities and Strong Communities. As associate director for housing at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, she developed grantmaking strategies focused on rental-housing policy and research on how housing matters.

Jessica Sager, Vice Chair
CEO, All Our Kin, Inc.

Jessica Sager is CEO of All Our Kin, Inc. Sager co-teaches a Yale University seminar on “Child Care, Society and Public Policy.” She has provided commentary on child care issues for Time, The Hill, New America and Education Week. Sager’s honors include the Seton Elm-Ivy Award, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s “Women in Business Champion” award, the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, New Profit’s “Extraordinary Social Female Entrepreneur” designation, the Roslyn S. Jaffe Award Grand Prize and the Ashoka Changemakers/Robert Wood Johnson Champion of Children’s Well-Being award. She is an Ashoka Fellow, a Fellow of the 14th class of the Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship and an Aspen Braddock Scholar. Most recently, she was named to the CARE 100 list of the Americans doing the most to re-imagine and re-humanize our care system.

Gloria Lee, Secretary
Co-Founder and Head, Rise Community Capital LLC

Gloria Lee is Co-Founder and Head at Rise Community Capital LLC, a minority- and women-owned firm providing strategic and capital advisory services to improve opportunities for lower-income families and working-class neighborhoods. Lee brings over 25 years in commercial and nonprofit real estate, community development finance and social-impact analysis. She has secured, structured and deployed more than $2.7 billion of debt and equity capital during her career throughout the US and Puerto Rico. Lee has experience in working across a wide range of sectors and project types, from large, catalytic, mixed-use projects, health and education community facilities, small businesses and other activities such as business and food incubators, maker or lab spaces, and innovative workforce training centers. Throughout her career, Lee has been bringing financing, real estate and strategic resources to communities that are overlooked by the traditional providers. Her network includes relationships with public, private and nonprofit organizations, including a wide network of CDFI and socially motivated capital relationships. Prior to Rise, Lee held positions with financial services and real estate companies including Praedium, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Next Street.

Eileen Fitzgerald, Treasurer
Founder and Principal, ThruSight LLC

Eileen Fitzgerald is Founder and Principal of ThruSight LLC, a strategic consulting and advisory services firm. As a principal at ThruSight, she leverages the expertise and insight she gained as a leader in her more than 30-year career in the housing, community development and nonprofit industry. Prior to forming ThruSight, Fitzgerald served as head of housing affordability philanthropy with Wells Fargo, where she led the development and execution of a $1 billion Housing Affordability Philanthropy commitment. At Wells Fargo, she initiated an immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the Keeping People Housed initiative, and also launched the $60 million WORTH program to support 40,000 new homeowners of color. She spearheaded the $40 million Growing Diverse Housing Developers initiative to increase affordable housing supply and support the increased financial strength and capacity of Black and Latino developers. Fitzgerald previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF). She also worked at the Fannie Mae Foundation and as Chief Investment Officer for Single Family at the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, served at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service as the associate and acting administrator, and held positions in Virginia and Maryland state governments.

Tawanna A. Black
CEO, Living Truth Enterprises

Tawanna A. Black is Founder and CEO at Living Truth Enterprises. For more than 20 years, Black has led multi-sector collaborations, triple bottom line diversity and inclusion strategy development, and economic revitalization organizations in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. In 2017, Black launched the Center for Economic Inclusion, the nation’s first organization dedicated exclusively to creating inclusive regional economies by equipping public and private sector employers to dismantle institutional racism and build shared accountability for inclusive economic growth. Prior to founding the Center, Black was Executive Director of the Northside Funders Group. Black’s awards and commendations include: City of Minneapolis History Maker (2021); Twin Cities Business Community Impact Award (2021); Washburn University Alumni Fellow (2018), Twin Cities Business 100 People to Know (2017); Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s Women in Business Award (2017); Minnesota Business Magazines’ Real Power 50 (2017); selected as one of the nation’s Top 25 Disruptive Leaders working to close racial gaps by Living Cities (2016); recipient of the prestigious Bush Fellowship by the Bush Foundation (2014); and Midlands Business Journal’s (Omaha) 40 Under 40 (2004).

Michelle Matthews
Chief Strategy & Operations Officer, Purpose Built Communities Foundation

As a senior leader at Purpose Built Communities Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing resident-centered, holistic neighborhood revitalization, Michelle provides guidance to Network Members who implement the Purpose Built model as leaders, conveners, and catalysts of holistic transformational change at the neighborhood level. Prior to joining Purpose Built in 2016, Michelle founded Matthews Consulting Group (MCG). For more than two decades, she served as a trusted advisor with expertise in organizational development, change management and consulting. Her passionate leadership has benefitted nonprofit organizations like Families First, the Task Force for Global health, and Communities in Schools of Atlanta. She also sits on the Build Healthy Places Network Advisory Council.

Ron Schrager
Principal and Co-Founder, Eightfold Real Estate Capital

Ron brings more than 37 years of experience in real estate investment, management and finance to LIIF. Before founding Eightfold, he served 18 years at LNR Property, ultimately as Chief Operating Officer, where he oversaw operations across multiple business divisions and led initiatives in special servicing, CMBS Investment and joint ventures. Earlier at LNR and its predecessor, Lennae Corporation, he directed asset management, due diligence, portfolio financing and international expansion efforts, including the establishing operations in Los Angeles and Tokyo. Prior to joining LNR, Mr. Chrager was a Vice president at Chemical Bank (now JPMorgan Chase) in New York, where he managed a $300 million portfolio of restructured loans and originated complex real estate transactions. He began his career with the Boston Consulting Group and ICF Incorporated.

Shekar Narasimhan
Managing Partner, Beekman Advisors

Beekman Advisors, which Shekar co-founded 22 years ago, has had over 100 clients and enabled over $5 billion of transactions. Prior to Beekman, he was in the real estate/multifamily lending business for several decades, including as Chairman & CEO of the WMF Group, a publicly traded, commercial mortgage financial services company. WMF was one of the largest such firms in the country before being acquired by Prudential in 2000. In his civic life, Shekar has served on many public and nonprofit boards. Shekar is currently serving on the boards of the Democracy Alliance and Multifamily Impact Council Research Board of Trustees. He is also currently on the Advisory Council for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy and the Economic Advisory Council of the Center for American Progress. He served until recently for over a decade on the boards of Broadstone Net Lease, Inc. (NYSE: BNL) and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. and its subsidiary. In his public service, he has formerly served as Chairman and Commissioner for the Virginia Housing development Authority, on the Viriginia Board of Housing and Community Development and Commissioner on President Obama’s White House Advisory Commission of AAPIs. He is a sought-after speaker on housing finance and affordable housing and is considered a leading expert on renal housing issues in the United States.

Calvin Gladney, LEED AP
Former President and CEO, Smart Growth America

Calvin Gladney is the former President and CEO of Smart Growth America. Previously, Gladney was Managing Partner of Mosaic Urban Partners, a real estate development and advisory services firm that advised nonprofits, cities and elected officials on how to sustainably and equitably regenerate their communities. In 2017, Gladney was also the Urban Land Institute’s Senior Visiting Fellow for Equity. Over the past 10 years, Gladney has worked on community rehabilitation projects in more than 25 cities and has served as a strategic advisor on projects with estimated development costs of over $1 billion and totaling more than 5 million square feet of planned development. He has worked on community development projects throughout the United States, including projects in: Baltimore; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; Denver; Detroit; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Houston; Jacksonville, Florida; Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; Oakland, California; Pittsburgh; Prince George’s County, Maryland; and Washington, D.C. Gladney, through Mosaic, was also part of the team that developed a new 31-unit apartment building and a separate two-story restaurant in Washington, D.C. Prior to founding Mosaic, Gladney served as Vice President of the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation (AWC), a Washington, D.C. quasi-public real estate corporation, where he assisted the Chief Executive Officer with the management of the corporation and was the project manager for a master-planned, mixed-use redevelopment of 67 acres of city land. Gladney also previously served as the General Counsel and Transactions Manager at BRIDGE Housing Corporation, a private developer in San Francisco.

Jennifer LeSar
CEO and Founder, LeSar Portfolio of Firms, San Diego, California

Jennifer LeSar combines a background of four decades in community development, real estate development and investment banking with a deep working knowledge of ecosystem change management and organizational strategy. She is the CEO and Founder of several systems change and sustainable communities-focused firms. Her work supports clients in achieving impactful and scalable solutions to today’s most vexing policy challenges including addressing our global housing affordability crisis and ending homelessness in the United States.

Dionne Nelson
President and CEO, Laurel Street

Dionne Nelson is President and CEO of Laurel Street, a mixed-income developer working with communities throughout the Southeast. Nelson establishes and manages the overall strategic direction, operations and growth of the company and has more than 25 years of experience in real estate development, finance and operations. Prior to the founding of Laurel Street, Nelson served as Senior Vice President at Crosland, with responsibility for the company’s affordable housing development and operations. Previously, she managed investments at NewSchools Venture Fund and Earnest Partners and built her skills in strategy, organization and operations as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. Nelson began her career in financial services working as an Investment Banking Analyst at Salomon Brothers in New York. Nelson serves as a Director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond – Charlotte Branch. She is also a member of the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council (CELC). Nelson is a member of the National Advisory Board for the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing, and ULI’s Affordable and Workforce Housing Council. She is also a member of Leadership Charlotte Class 29.

Daniel A. Nissenbaum
CEO, Low Income Investment Fund

Daniel A. Nissenbaum is Chief Executive Officer at the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). Prior to LIIF, Nissenbaum was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where he oversaw Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) compliance for the firm’s Urban Investment Group and capital investment for the 10,000 Small Businesses program. Previously, he also held real estate and community development finance positions at Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank Community Development Corporation (CDC), JPMorgan CDC and HSBC Bank. In addition, Nissenbaum served as an investment officer with the Merrill Lynch Community Development Company, where he was actively involved in debt financings, including construction lending, revolving-credit facilities and other community development financings to for-profit and nonprofit intermediaries.

Bindiya Patel
Executive Director, Leadership Tomorrow, Seattle, Washington

As Executive Director of Leadership Tomorrow, Bindiya Patel is responsible for ensuring that the organization cultivates, inspires, connects and engages an effective community of leaders in the Puget Sound region. Patel has over two decades of leadership experience at equity-focused nonprofit organizations where she has worked toward her lifelong mission to equip and create space for diverse leaders to make the world better for those furthest from power. Patel spent 19 years serving in several roles at PATH, a global health nonprofit based in Seattle. Most recently, she oversaw strategy and operations as Managing Director of PATH’s largest division.

Yohana Quiróz, Ed.D. 
Chief Operations Officer, Felton Institute 

Yohana Quiróz is Chief Operations Officer at Felton Institute. She was born in Honduras and raised in the Mission District, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in San Francisco. She is an experienced senior executive with 25 years of working with diverse, low-income, at-promise individuals with multiple barriers and abilities. In her role, she is responsible for developing the vision and managing publicly funded early care and education (ECE), early intervention and inclusion, family support and community-based behavioral/mental health services via a two-generation, holistic and culturally responsive approach. Quiróz has been instrumental in leading strategic partnerships, agency-wide growth initiatives, program development, budgets and facilities, including new ECE co-development projects with affordable housing communities in three different San Francisco neighborhoods. She also helps set and continuously align the organization around key strategic priorities, driven by understanding the community’s needs, the ever-changing nonprofit landscape and the organization’s internal core capabilities.

Margaret Solle Salazar
CEO, REACH CDC, Portland, Oregon

Margaret Solle Salazar is CEO of REACH, which has a mission is to create opportunities for all people to thrive by developing and promoting equitable access to quality, affordable homes, supportive services and community. Since 1982, REACH has built innovative and affordable housing serving lower-income families and individuals in the Portland metropolitan region. Solle Salazar was formerly Executive Director of Oregon Housing and Community Services Department, where she served on the Cabinet of Gov. Kate Brown and oversaw the state’s efforts to build affordable housing, open the door to homeownership, prevent and end homelessness, and expand housing stability. Solle Salazar directs programs across the housing continuum, such as LIHTC, multifamily bonding and gap financing, homeless services, energy and weatherization assistance, mortgage lending, and efforts to promote equity and racial justice. Prior to joining OHCS in 2016, Solle Salazar served in various leadership roles over a 10-year career at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She served as Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing Programs in HUD Headquarters, leading the Office of Recapitalization and the creation and implementation of the Rental Assistance Demonstration. Solle Salazar also served as HUD Portland, Oregon Field Office Director and Chief of Multifamily Production in the HUD San Francisco Regional Office. She began her career as a foundation program officer in the San Francisco Bay Area working with community-based organizations standing up for social, economic and environmental justice across the Western States. As a housing advocate, in 2002 Solle Salazar led a successful grassroots campaign for just-cause eviction in Oakland, California. She served as a policy analyst in the offices of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from Wesleyan University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael A. Solomon
Managing Director, Community Development, Charles Schwab Banking and Trust Services

Michael Solomon is Managing Director, Community Development at Charles Schwab Banking and Trust Services. He leads and provides strategic direction and oversight for the CRA programs of the Charles Schwab banks, managing the lending, investment, grant and community outreach programs. Prior to joining Charles Schwab in 2010, Solomon held various senior positions in community development finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan. Solomon began his career in community development in 1989 doing pro bono legal work for nonprofit developers in New York City. Before working in community development, for 12 years Solomon was counsel to Debevoise and Plimpton, a major New York City international law firm where he practiced real estate, corporate and community development law, and Luskin, Stern and Eisler LLP, a boutique law firm in New York City specializing in bankruptcy and finance. Solomon was law clerk to the Hon. Edward R. Korman, Chief Judge, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York.