Advisory Board
Meet Our Advisory Board
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Kent Colton is the President of K. Colton LLC and a former Senior Scholar at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. He has more than 30 years of experience as a housing scholar and expert in the field of mortgage finance and housing policy.
Prior to his work with the Joint Center and Colton, LLC, Kent was the Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, a position he held from 1984 to 1999. Before that, he served as an executive vice president of Freddie Mac for policy, planning and economic research. He was a member of the Millennial Housing Commission, and staff director of the President's Commission on Housing.
A graduate of Utah State University, Colton received an M.P.A. from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Urban Studies from MIT.
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Clark Ivory has been the Chief Executive Officer of Ivory Homes in Salt Lake City, Utah since 2000. In 2006, Clark formed Ivory Commercial, one of Utah’s largest apartment builders and property management companies. Clark served as director of the Salt Lake City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank from 2006 to 2011.
Clark is currently co-chairman of the Real Estate Advisory Board to the David Eccles School of Business and serves on the Advisory Board for the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
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Chris Herbert is the Managing Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies. Dr. Herbert has extensive experience conducting research related to housing policy and urban development, both in the U.S. and abroad. A key focus of his research has been on the financial and demographic dimensions of homeownership, and the implications for housing policy.
Having previously worked at the Center in the 1990s, Herbert rejoined the Center in 2010 from Abt Associates, to serve as the Director of Research. In this role, Dr. Herbert led the team responsible for producing the Center’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing and its biennial America’s Rental Housing reports, essential resources for both public and private decision makers in the housing industry.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac and a member of the Advisory Board of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging. He holds a PhD and Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.
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Ryan E. Smith is a professor of architecture and director of the School of Architecture at the University of Arizona. Professor Smith has been teaching, researching and consulting with respect to offsite construction and housing, modular product R&D, business strategy and market assessment for nearly 20 years. He is author of numerous offsite construction reports, papers and books including the seminal text, Prefab Architecture: A Guide to Modular Design and Construction (2011).
He is the founding past chair and current board member of the National Institute of Building Sciences, Offsite Construction Council. He is also a fellow of the Modular Building Institute and a senior research fellow in the Centre for Offsite Construction + Innovative Structures, Institute for Sustainable Construction at Edinburgh Napier University in the UK. Ryan is founding partner of MOD X, an offsite construction knowledge management advisory group located in Arizona, New York, Boston and Switzerland.
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Laurie Goodman is a vice president at the Urban Institute and codirector of its Housing Finance Policy Center, which provides policymakers with data-driven analyses of housing finance policy issues that they can depend on for relevance, accuracy, and independence.
Goodman spent 30 years as an analyst and research department manager on Wall Street. From 2008 to 2013, she was a senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group LP, a boutique broker-dealer specializing in securitized products, where her strategy effort became known for its analysis of housing policy issues. From 1993 to 2008, Goodman was head of global fixed income research and manager of US securitized products research at UBS and predecessor firms, which were ranked first by Institutional Investor for 11 years. Before that, she held research and portfolio management positions at several Wall Street firms.
She began her career as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Goodman was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Kevin G. Chavers is a member of the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Chimera Investment Corporation, Toorak Capital Partners and the Board of Trustees of the Optimum Funds. He was formerly a Managing Director, and member of the Global Fixed Income Securitized Asset Investment Team at BlackRock. He was also a Co Leader of the BlackRock Impact Opportunity fund and formerly a member of the Global Public Policy Group and Government Relations Steering Committee. He began his career at BlackRock in the Financial Markets Advisory Group. Mr. Chavers has extensive experience in the mortgage capital markets and housing finance policy in both the public and private sectors. He was the Co-Chair of the Black Professionals Network at BlackRock.
Prior to joining BlackRock in 2011, Mr. Chavers held roles at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co., Ginnie Mae under the Clinton Administration, and the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He began his career with the law firm of Milbank, Tweed Hadley and McCloy.
Mr. Chavers is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned a Bachelor’s in City Planning from the University Of Virginia School Of Architecture. He currently serves as Chairman of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and on the boards of directors of Enterprise Community Partners, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, the University of Virginia Foundation and the Penn Institute for Urban Research. He is a former Partnership for New York City David Rockefeller Fellow.
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Jenny Schuetz is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Metro, and is an expert in urban economics and housing policy. Dr. Schuetz has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on land use regulation, housing prices, urban amenities, and neighborhood change. Dr. Schuetz has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the PBS NewsHour, The Indicator podcast, Vox, and Slate.
Dr. Schuetz is the author of Fixer Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems.
Topics of recent research include: how statewide zoning reform could improve housing affordability; local strategies to help renters during the COVID-19 crisis; rethinking homeownership incentives to narrow the racial wealth gap; and how housing costs exacerbate economic and racial segregation.
Before joining Brookings, Dr. Schuetz served as a principal economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Schuetz was also an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and a post-doctoral fellow at NYU Furman. Dr. Schuetz is a nonresident senior fellow at GWU’s Center for Washington Area Studies and teaches in Georgetown’s urban planning program.
Dr. Schuetz earned a PhD in public policy from Harvard University, a master’s in city planning from M.I.T., and a B.A. with Highest Distinction in economics and political and social thought from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Schuetz currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Ivory Innovations and for Tech Equity.
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Molly Turner is a leading expert on technology startups and cities. Through her teaching at Haas and her work in the field, she has shaped the contemporary conversation about technology’s impacts on urban life and governance. At Haas, Turner teaches the popular class Tech and the City: How to Get Urban Innovation Right to graduate MBAs. She is also the co-host and co-producer of the podcast Technopolis about how technology is disrupting, remaking, and sometimes overrunning our cities. Turner is deeply engaged in contemporary tech and urban policy issues through her advisory work with city leaders and urban tech startups, as well as through her service on the boards of urban policy think tank SPUR, and non-profit affordable housing developer BRIDGE Housing.
Before teaching at Haas, Turner was an early employee of Airbnb, where she established the company’s public policy team in 2011 and directed its groundbreaking regulatory collaboration with cities. She later served as the company’s Global Head of Civic Partnerships, where she directed Airbnb’s partnerships with governments, including its international disaster response program, which has housed hundreds of thousands of displaced people and refugees. Before Airbnb, Turner worked for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, the UNESCO World Heritage Cities Program, and an urban planning consulting firm. Turner holds a Master in Urban Planning from Harvard University and a BA from Dartmouth College.
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Jonathan Lawless is the Head of Homeownership at Bilt Rewards, a loyalty program that allows users to earn points on rent. He was previously the Head of Product at Pathway Homes, which offers unique programs to support individuals and families on their journey to homeownership.
Lawless brings a wealth of expertise from his time as Fannie Mae’s Product Development and Affordable Housing Vice President, where he drove innovation in the mortgage industry to expand access to credit and affordable housing across the country ultimately through programs designed to benefit renters, homebuyers, and the industry. He led the development of several key Fannie Mae initiatives – including HomeReady®, the company’s flagship affordability product. Prior to this role, he was the Underwriting and Pricing Analytics Vice President, where he leveraged data to influence key pricing, underwriting, and portfolio management decisions. Lawless joined Fannie Mae in 2000 as a Statistical Analysis System intern in credit policy.
Additionally, Lawless has worked with 2Seeds Network, a non-profit group involved in agricultural development in East Africa. Lawless has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from St. John’s College and a Master of Science in finance from George Washington University.
Meet Our Advisory Board Fellows
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Media Fellow
John McManus, founder and president of The Builder’s Daily, is an award-winning editorial, programming, and digital content strategist. TBD's purpose is a community capable of constant improvement.
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Jenny Song is a partner with Navitas Capital, leading investments in transformative technology for the built environment across vertical AI and climate tech. Prior to Navitas, she was a founder and operator at an education technology start-up. Jenny started her career in strategy consulting at Bain & Company, where she managed strategy and investment diligence engagements across sectors including retail, supply chain and industrials. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago Harris School, and a Bachelor’s of Science from Northwestern University.
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John Peavey is the Director of the Building Science Division at Home Innovation Research Labs in Washington DC. Prior to re-joining the Home Innovation Research Laboratory, Peavey provided consulting services to various clients, led building codes and standards development for the AIA, and developed new products for Louisiana Pacific Corp (LP), CertainTeed, and two subsidiaries of Masco Corporation. He started his professional career with 3M as a mechanical engineer. Peavey is a licensed Professional Engineer (Mechanical). He holds both an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Art and Design (with emphasis in Building Technology) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Former Advisory Board Members
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Natalie Gochnour serves as an associate dean in the David Eccles School of Business and director of the Ken C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. She also serves as the chief economist for the Salt Lake Chamber. In these roles, she leads the state’s premier public policy institute, helps connect the Eccles School with the broader business community and shares applied economic and business research.
Gochnour’s experience includes a diverse mix of public service and business experience. During her public service, she advised Utah governors Norm Bangerter, Mike Leavitt and Olene Walker. She also served as a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration, serving as an associate administrator at the EPA and counselor to the secretary at Health and Human Services. For seven years she led the public policy priorities of the Salt Lake Chamber.
Gochnour has both an undergraduate and master’s degree in economics from the University of Utah and teaches public finance.
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Research Fellow
Dejan Eskic is a senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. He is involved in housing, construction and real estate research, fiscal impact studies and economic and demographic analysis. His professional career has focused on providing the best information to key decision makers, whether they’d be local or state officials, executives of national retailers or publicly listed REITs. Prior to joining the Gardner Policy Institute, Eskic worked in the retail research industry where he evaluated current and future sales performance for retail sites through statistical gravity modeling reflecting market demographics throughout the country. Additionally, he has worked on a number of public-private-partnerships relating to Tax Increment Financing, along with numerous real estate market studies and economic development plans.
Before earning a Master’s in Real Estate Development, Eskic earned a B.S. in Urban Planning, both from the University of Utah. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Real Estate Market Analysis at the University of Utah.
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Carol Galante is the I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy and the Faculty Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. She also co-chairs the Policy Advisory Board of the Fisher Center of Real Estate and Urban Economics.
As Faculty Director for the Terner Center, Galante oversees the Center’s work and co-leads the Center’s research agenda, supervising projects that identify, develop and advance innovative solutions in local, state and federal housing policy and practice. Prior to coming to UC Berkeley, Galante served in the Obama Administration for over five years as the Assistant Secretary for Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing programs.
Galante holds a Master of City Planning from U.C. Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio Wesleyan
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Matt founded HousingTech Ventures to invest in early-stage companies with tech-enabled solutions that have the prospect to increase housing availability, attainability, and affordability.
With over 20 years’ experience building businesses in the housing and technology sectors, Matt most recently served as Vice President of Innovation for Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., a national real estate financial services platform serving the affordable housing sector. In that role, he built an investment portfolio of HousingTech companies and led the launch of an online impact investing brokerage.
His previous experiences include serving as a policy advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and running a federal interagency taskforce on e-commerce; providing business strategy and policy consulting to high-tech and startup companies as Vice President of E-commerce at Infotech Strategies; and co-founding and running a real estate development company in Baltimore, Maryland.
He currently serves as an Urbantech advisor to Dreamit Ventures, an Ivory Innovations Fellow, and member of the Multifamily Operating Standards Assessment & Improvement Council. Matt has served on numerous non-profit boards and currently chairs the real estate finance committee of Benedictine Programs & Services, which helps children and adults with developmental disabilities achieve their greatest potential and is undergoing a $40 million campus transformation.
He is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (MPP) and Brown University (BA).