Hosted by
The Innovations in Housing Affordability Summit is a premier event to bring together academics, nonprofits, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to focus on innovation and collaboration in America’s housing affordability challenges.
Schedule
Thursday, Oct. 6
Friday, Oct. 7
Participant Biographies
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Noah Abraham, DC Flex
Noah Abraham is a Deputy Administrator at Washington DC Department of Human Services. He leads the District’s family homeless services continuum of care across seven program areas. Noah has led critical homeless services reforms in the District including the closure of DC General Family Shelter and the opening of eight short term family housing programs. He spearheaded the design and implementation of Homelessness Prevention Program, DC Flex Program and most recently STAY DC Program that provided rental assistance to 53,000 District households in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. These system changes led to a 78% reduction in family homelessness since 2016.
Prior joining DHS in 2013, Noah served as a Program Coordinator at African Community Center and Senior Advisor at Save the Children. Noah has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Addis Ababa University and a graduate degree in Public Administration from George Mason University.
Darren Aiello, Brigham Young University Marriott School of Business
Darren Aiello is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the BYU Marriott School of Management. His research interests include Real Estate Finance, Securitization, and Empirical Corporate Finance. Darren received a BS in Business Administration and a BA in Economics, both from Pepperdine University, as well as an MBA in Finance from the UCLA Anderson School of Management prior to receiving his PhD in Finance, also from UCLA Anderson. Prior to academia Darren spent eight years in various analytical and managerial roles at one of the largest issuers and master servicers of private label mortgage-backed securities in the United States.
Allen Argyle, Ivory Commercial
Argyle’s experience at the Ivory Companies has been providing estimating services, construction project management, and development project oversight on large multifamily housing projects. During this time, he has spent his days creating and maintaining development budgets and proformas, coordinating the activities of architects and engineers, soliciting proposals from and selecting subcontractors, negotiating and writing subcontracts, maintaining project budgets and schedules, and overseeing subcontractors on site.
During Argyle’s career, his passion for learning has led me to learn new software programs including Sketchup, Revit, and Argus, obtain a master’s degree in real estate development, and become a certified commercial building inspector.
Elior Cohen, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Elior Cohen is an economist at the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. His research interests lie at the intersection of labor and public economics. His research applies empirical methods to study various topics, including homelessness, housing, immigration and innovation. Elior joined the Bank in 2021 after completing his Ph.D. in Economics at UCLA.
Michael D. Eriksen, University of Cincinnati
Michael Eriksen is an Associate Professor of Real Estate at the University of Cincinnati. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and Biology from Gonzaga University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Syracuse University. He was previously on the faculty at the University of Georgia and Texas Tech University before coming to the University of Cincinnati in 2015.
Dr. Eriksen’s research focuses on low-income housing markets, and he has worked on projects concerning the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, housing vouchers, home safety modifications, and homeownership assistance
grants. That research has appeared in theJournal of Public Economics,American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Urban Economics, and Real Estate Economics. His work on fall prevention among the elderly won the 2014 best paper on senior housing award sponsored by the National Investment Center for Senior Housing.
Carlos Garriga, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Carlos Garriga is a senior vice president and the director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in economics from the Universitat de Barcelona (Spain). Mr. Garriga’s research focus is in the area of macroeconomics and housing, household finance, monetary economics and asset pricing, and public economics.
Prior to joining the St. Louis Fed in 2007, Mr. Garriga was an assistant professor of economics at Florida State University and at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has been a visiting scholar at international central banks (the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Reserve Bank in New Zealand and Sveriges Riksbank), Federal Reserve banks (Atlanta, Cleveland and Minneapolis) and universities (the London School of Economics, Queen Mary University in London, the University of Minnesota, LAEF at the University of California Santa Barbara and CEDEC Washington University in St. Louis).
Carl Gershenson, EvictionLab
Carl Gershenson is broadly interested in how markets and politics structure inequality in the United States. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University, where his dissertation explored the political and cultural origins of the American business corporation. As a graduate student, Carl published on a variety of topics, including corporate democracy and securities law, neighborhood level politics and the distribution of city services, and eviction and urban labor markets (with Matthew Desmond). After graduation, Carl joined the Sociology Department at Washington University in St. Louis as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, where he collaborated with Professor Tim Bartley on a project exploring how xenophobia and attitudes toward markets structure public opinion regarding immigration and offshoring.
Andra Ghent, University of Utah
Andra Ghent is a Professor of Finance at the University of Utah where she holds the Ivory-Boyer Chair in Real Estate. She is the Academic Director of the Ivory-Boyer Real Estate Center. Her current research interests are real estate finance, financial intermediation, and urban economics. Her research has been cited in US congressional testimony and by media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, and Bloomberg. Her research has been published in top academic journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Management Science, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Review of Financial Studies. She is an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics.
Marco Giacoletti, Marshall School of Business
(biography coming soon)
Arpit Gupta, NYU Stern School of Business
Arpit Gupta joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Finance in September 2016. Professor Gupta’s research interests focus on using large datasets to understand default dynamics in household finance, real estate and corporate finance. Recent papers examine the role for foreclosure contagion in mortgage markets and estimate the impact of adverse health events on foreclosures and bankruptcies. He is the recipient of the 2016 Top Finance Graduate Award at Copenhagen Business School. He received his B.S. in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from Columbia Business School.
Aaron Hedlund, University of Missouri
Research fellow at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank and a tenured Associate Professor of Real Estate and Economics in the Krannert School of Management. From 2020 to 2021, he was also the Chief Domestic Economist and Senior Adviser at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Hedlund’s research focuses on real estate, household finance, and macroeconomics. He received my Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and Bachelor’s in economics and math from Duke University.
Erik Hembre, University of Illinois-Chicago
Erik Hembre is an applied microeconomist with research interests in housing policy, tax policy, and the design of anti-poverty programs. His research has focused on topics including homeownership and mortgage decisions, the First-time Homebuyer Tax Credit, the Homeowner Affordability Modification Program, mortgage default, and the TANF program. He is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois-Chicago where he teaches courses on public economics and microeconomics. Erik holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College. Prior to receiving his Ph.D., he worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the Real Estate and Housing Finance Section.
Troup Howard, University of Utah
Troup Howard is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business. His research explores how regional economic outcomes and household finances are affected by the fiscal choices of state and local governments, with particular attention to public debt and taxation. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and Mother Jones.
Prior to joining academia, he was a management consultant working with public sector agencies, large NGOs, and cultural institutions. He teaches Introduction to Economics in the MBA program at the University of Utah. He holds a PhD in Finance from the University of California at Berkeley, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, and an AB in English Literature from the University of Chicago.
Abby Ivory, Ivory Innovations
Ivory Innovations was born while Abby was working on the Impact Investing team for the Sorenson Impact Center. Prior to her experience in impact investing, she worked as an intern focused on researching Green Bonds with Equilibrium Capital in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Abby graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Utah in 2016 with an emphasis in Sustainability.
Karan Kaul, Urban Institute
Karan Kaul is the principal research associate in the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. He publishes innovative, data-driven research on complex, high-impact policy issues to improve the US mortgage financial system. At Urban, he has led the Mortgage Servicing Collaborative and the Mortgage Markets COVID-19 Collaborative. Before joining Urban, he spent 5 years at Freddie Mac as a senior strategist analyzing the business impact of post-crisis regulatory reforms. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Maryland, College Park.
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Adam Looney, The Marriner S. Eccles Institute
Adam Looney is a professor in the Department of Finance and Executive Director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute for Economics and Quantitative Analysis. Previously, he was the Joseph A. Pechman senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings and the Director of the Center on Regulation and Markets. He returned to Brookings in 2017 after three years of service in the U.S. Treasury Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis. Previously, he served as the senior economist for public finance and tax policy with President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a BA in economics from Dartmouth College.
Adam Loser, DR Horton
(biography coming soon)
Taylor Maughan, ICO companies
(biography coming soon)
Raven Molloy, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Raven Saks Molloy is a Deputy Associate Director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In this capacity she oversees work related to residential and commercial mortgage credit conditions, real estate prices, and housing markets. Her primary fields of research are housing, urban and labor economics, and she has written on topics including housing supply regulation, housing affordability and valuation, mortgage credit availability, migration, foreclosure, housing vacancy, and executive compensation. She is actively involved in the academic research community, including service on the editorial boards of academic journals and on committees of academic associations. She is also a fellow of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics of the Homer Hoyt Institute. She received a bachelor’s degree in economics and Asian studies from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Alvin Murphy, Arizona State University
Alvin Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Arizona State University. His research interests include Urban Economics, Environmental Economics, and Industrial Organization. His research has been published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Review, Econometrica, International Economic Review, Journal of Econometrics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics . Murphy obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University, an M.A. in Economics from University College Dublin (Ireland), and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). More information can be found at www.public.asu.edu/~amurph10/
Wayne Niederhauser, State of Utah
Wayne Niederhauser is a former state legislator serving in the Utah State Senate for twelve and a half years, six of those years as Senate President. His administration was marked by a measured and collaborative approach to policy. He helped lead the State out of the Great Recession into an era of great prosperity. The focus of his efforts and leadership was centered around the need to address the challenges of Utah’s amazing growth and the need to modernize tax policy. Senator Niederhauser sponsored the very successful tax reform effort in 2007. Outside of public service, Wayne is a Certified Public Accountant and Real Estate Broker. He received his education from Utah State University where he earned a Master’s Degree in Accounting. His public service now consists of serving full-time as the Utah Homeless Coordinator and on the boards of several non-profit organizations.
Andrii Parkhomenko, USC Marshall School of Business
Andrii is an assistant professor at the Department of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business . His research interests include spatial economics, urban economics, and housing. In his recent work, he explored the implications of telecommuting for the spatial distribution of economic activity, the effect of land use regulations on local and aggregate economic performance, the relationship between housing prices and job polarization within local labor markets, etc.
Danilo Pelletiere, DC Department of Housing and Community Development
Danilo Pelletiere was appointed Affordable Housing Preservation Officer by Mayor Bowser in September 2021. In this capacity, he leads the District’s efforts to preserve existing affordable housing. He also serves as senior advisor, working on policies and programs that included the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), District Opportunity to Purchase Act (DOPA), DC Housing Preservation Fund, the DC Flex shallow voucher, COVID-19 relief and recovery, condominiums, rent control, fair housing, and the agency budget.
Before working for the District, Mr. Pelletiere was a Senior Economist in the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Regional Science and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University. He is a past Fulbright Scholar in Germany in the field of economic development.
Kate Pennington, US Census Bureau
Kate is a research economist at the US Census Bureau in the Center for Economic Studies. Kate received a PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in 2021. Kate’s research focuses on housing affordability, gentrification, and displacement.
Michael Reher, University of California, San Diego
Reher’s research is at the intersection of intermediary finance and household finance, with a common theme of how the supply of real estate financing affects households’ housing costs. His research has been
published in the Review of Financial Studies,Journal of Money, Credit, & Banking, and Journal of Investment Management.
Prior to Rady, Reher worked at the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and San Francisco and at Wealthfront, an automated financial advisor. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard in 2019, where he was a John R. Meyer Fellow. He received a B.S. from Georgetown in 2014 as valedictorian.
Jim Seaberg, ICO Companies
He has served as the President of ICO Companies since 2008, and also chairs ICO’s investment committee. Prior to his role at ICO Jim was Vice President, Office of the Chairman-Performance Improvement, for Dell Computer Corporation, a Global 50 company. He was instrumental in leading revenue enhancement efforts across multiple business units globally, achieving significant operating margin improvements on more than half of the company’s revenue base.
He is currently Senior Advisor to Health Care Quality Catalyst, a Sequoia-backed healthcare information technology company. He also co-teaches as an adjunct faculty member two advanced finance classes at Brigham Young University, one of which manages a student-led investment fund. Jim received a B.S. degree in Accounting, Magna Cum Laude and University Honors, from Brigham Young University in 1987 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1992.
Jim Schmitz, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Jim Schmitz taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and SUNY–Stony Brook before coming to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in 1992. He is currently a senior research economist at the Bank and a visiting professor in economics at the University of Minnesota. Jim’s main interests are in the fields of economic growth and industrial organization. He has published in several journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and theAmerican Economic Review.
Gregor Schubert, UCLA
Gregor Schubert joined the UCLA Anderson School of Management faculty in 2021. He researches housing finance, urban economics, real estate, labor economics and corporate finance, most recently focusing on how urban migration networks affect housing markets.
Schubert has worked as a strategy consultant in banking and financial services, industrial and consumer goods, and health care. His advanced education has focused on economics but as an undergraduate at Princeton he also minored in theater. He carries his creative passions into his academic sensibility. If classroom teaching is a type of performance, Schubert hopes to inspire the student audience to think about housing markets in terms of how we choose where we live and why.
Louise Sheiner, The Brookings Institution
Louise Sheiner is the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and policy director for the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. She previously served as a senior economist in the Fiscal Analysis Section for the Research and Statistics Division with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In her time at the Fed, she was also appointed deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (1996) and served as senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers (1995-96). Sheiner pursues research on federal and state and local fiscal policy, productivity measurement, demographic change, health policy, and other fiscal and macroeconomic issues. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, as well as an undergraduate degree in biology at Harvard.
Lily Shen, Clemson University
Dr. Shen is an assistant professor of finance and visiting scholar of the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Her research focuses on Fintech and Proptech, in which she applies Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to shed light on how technology innovation can help investors and policymakers better monitor financial risks. Her research papers have been published in the Management Science, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. She is also the single-author winner of the prestigious 2019 American Real Estate Society Manuscript Prize.
Athena Tsouderou, University of Miami
Athena Tsouderou is Assistant Professor of Finance at the Miami Herbert Business School. Her research studies climate finance and real estate markets. Athena holds a PhD in Finance, cum laude, and a Master’s in Research from IE Business School (Spain), and a Master’s in Actuarial Science from Columbia University (New York). She has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and has presented at top level academic conferences. Her research is related to policy questions, and she often interacts with central banks and other policy institutions. Her research uses econometric techniques, analysing large databases, as well as quantitative models. Her work has received important grants like the ING Think Forward Initiative.