Research Advisory Council
Eric S. Belsky is Executive Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and Lecturer of Urban Planning at the Harvard Design School. Established in 1959, the Joint Center identifies housing market opportunities and studies critical housing and community development issues. He also served as Research Director for the bipartisan congressional Millennial Housing Commission. Prior to his Harvard appointment, he led the Housing Finance and Credit Analysis Group at Price Waterhouse. He has also directed housing finance research for Fannie Mae and served as Senior Economist at the National Association of Home Builders. Belsky is the author of dozens of articles on housing economics and finance in trade publications and academic journals.
Eileen Diaz McConnell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Transborder Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies (title pending) at Arizona State University. Since earning her doctorate in Sociology at the University of Notre Dame in 2001, she has served as an independent contractor for the U.S. Census Bureau, Visiting Assistant Professor in Latino Studies at Indiana University, and Assistant Professor in Sociology and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois. Professor McConnell's research interests in housing include identifying inequalities by race, ethnicity, and nativity in access to and cost of home mortgages, homeownership, and housing wealth accumulation. Her scholarship has been published in outlets including Social Forces, Population Research and Policy Review, Latin American Research Review, and Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development.
George Gaberlavage is Associate Director in the AARP's Public Policy Institute, where he heads the Institutes Financial Services and Utilities Team which focuses on marketplace practices affecting the ability of older persons to obtain essential products and services. Under George's direction, the team conducts research and analyzes marketplace and regulatory developments in a variety of areas including financial services and literacy, credit practices, utilities and telecommunications, and privacy. Prior to joining AARP in 1986, George was Senior Federal Liaison with the National Association of Regional Councils where he worked with state and local officials representing the concerns of metropolitan areas and rural planning districts before Congress and the executive agencies.
Ira Goldstein is Director of Public Policy and Program Assessment for The Reinvestment Fund (TRF). Goldstein joined TRF in 1999 to lead its research and public policy efforts. He uses research on broad economic development issues and on the social impact of TRF's financing work to develop and introduce new public policy into the public forum for debate and implementation. Prior to joining TRF, he served as the Director of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity for the Mid-Atlantic region at the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Goldstein is the author of numerous articles and publications. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania where he teaches quantitative research methods courses for the Urban Studies Program. He has also taught courses at Temple University.
Chris Herbert is a Senior Associate in the Housing and Community Development practice of Abt Associates Inc. He has 18 years of experience conducting and managing research related to housing policy, housing markets, housing finance and urban development. In recent years, Dr. Herbert's work has focused on efforts to promote and maintain homeownership for low-income and minority families. His work in this area has included evaluations of federal and state homeownership programs, detailed literature reviews, and analysis of disparities in mortgage lending and residential foreclosure by income and race/ethnicity. Among his most recent research reports are The Homeownership Experience of Low-Income and Minority Families: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature, and Subprime Lending and Alternative Financial Services Providers: A Literature Review and Empirical Analysis. Prior to joining Abt Associates in 1997, Dr. Herbert was a researcher at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. He has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
Dan Immergluck is Associate Professor in the City and Regional Planning Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology (as of 6/1/05). Professor Immergluck has published widely on Community Reinvestment Act policy, fair lending, mortgage and housing markets, community and economic development, residential segregation, and small and minority business development issues. His research has been published in a wide variety of academic journals, and has been covered in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and numerous other print and broadcast media. Dr. Immergluck has testified before the U.S. Congress, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, federal agencies, and state and local legislative bodies. His latest book, Credit to the Community: Community Reinvestment and Fair Lending Policy in the U.S., was published in 2004 by M.E. Sharpe.
George McCarthy is Program Officer in Asset Building and Economic Development for the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, he was a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. McCarthy is an econometrician with strong interests in housing policy and community development. He has worked extensively with community development and non-profit organizations. McCarthy has been involved in the evaluation of national home ownership campaigns. He has also evaluated home ownership counseling programs in the United States for both the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. McCarthy has conducted research in house price appreciation in underserved neighborhoods, the default risk of affordable mortgages, housing affordability in U.S. metropolitan areas and the construction of indicators for sustainable development.
Patricia McCoy is Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut Law School. She teaches business organizations, securities regulation, banking regulation, and consumer finance law. Professor McCoy's research examines systemic risk, market failure, and consumer protection issues in the banking, securities, and insurance industries. She has written articles on predatory lending, bank director liability, post-socialist business law reforms, corporate governance, and global convergence in banking and is the author of two books. Professor McCoy was a member of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and chair of the Council's Consumer Credit Committee from 2002 through 2004. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association. In 2001, she was chair of the Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services of the Association of American Law Schools and is chair-elect of the Section for 2005.
Anthony Pennington-Cross is an Associate Professor of Finance in the College of Business Administration at Marquette University. He is widely published in academic journals including The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, and others. Recent research has focused on subprime lending in the housing market (pricing, predatory lending laws, and mortgage performance), house price dynamics, and other and urban and real estate issues. Prior to joining Marquette University Anthony was a Senior Economist in the Research Division at The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis where he organized a conference on Federal Government liabilities and lead research subprime lending in the mortgage markets and related predatory lending issues. While living in Washington, D.C., Anthony was a Senior Economist at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight in the Office of Policy and Research and the Director of Research at the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA) a research organization devoted to extending home ownership to all Americans.
Roberto Quercia is a Professor of City and Regional Planning, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, and the Director of the Center for Community Capitalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published numerous articles, primarily on the topics of low-income homeownership, affordable lending and the assessment of lending risks, and homeownership education and counseling. Dr. Quercia has also conducted research on neighborhood dynamics and poverty. He had done sponsored research for government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and General Accounting Office, municipalities, community organizations, and private entities such as the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Housing Policy Debate and Housing Studies. Dr. Quercia has held appointments at the University of Texas, the University of California at Berkeley, the Wharton Real Estate Center (University of Pennsylvania), and the Urban Institute.
Ellen Seidman is Director of the Financial Services and Education Project in the Asset Building Program of the New America Foundation. The project aims to provide national leadership on public policy issues related to expanding access to wealth-building financial services, especially for low- and moderate-income families; improving financial education; forging a new responsibility framework for consumer financial services in 21st century; and helping Americans to better manage their debt. In addition to her work at New America, Ms. Seidman continues to serve as Executive Vice President, National Policy and Partnership Development at ShoreBank Corporation, the nation's first and leading community development and environmental banking corporation. She also serves as Chair of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a ShoreBank nonprofit affiliate that helps financial services providers responsibly and sustainably serve underbanked consumers. Before joining ShoreBank, Ms. Seidman served as Senior Counsel to the Democratic staff of the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1997 to 2001, she was Director of the U.S Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision, heading the 1,200 person bureau responsible for regulating more than 1,000 savings associations around the United States. She was also a director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Chairman of the Board of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. From 1993 to 1997, Ms. Seidman served as Special Assistant for Economic Policy to President Clinton. She has also held senior positions at Fannie Mae, the United States Treasury Department, and the United States Department of Transportation. She holds a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College, a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, and an MBA in finance and investments from George Washington University. Ms. Seidman sits on the Board of Directors of the Center for Neighborhood Technology and its car-sharing affiliate I-Go, and Coastal Enterprises Inc., as well as on the Board of Overseers of the School of Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University.
Margery Austin Turner directs the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities policy center. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy and neighborhood issues, Turner analyzes issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination and its contribution to neighborhood segregation and inequality, and the role of housing policies in promoting residential mobility and location choice. Much of her current work focuses on the Washington metropolitan area, investigating conditions and trends in neighborhoods across the region. Turner served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 through 1996. Prior to joining HUD, Turner directed the housing research program at the Urban Institute. She has co-authored two national housing discrimination studies, which use paired testing to determine the incidence of discrimination against minority home-seekers. She has also extended the paired testing methodology to measure discrimination in employment and to mortgage lending.
Alan M. White joined the faculty at Valparaiso University School of Law in the fall of 2007, teaching consumer law, commercial law and civil procedure. He was previously a staff attorney and supervising attorney at the North Philadelphia office of Community Legal Services, Inc., and has also been a fellow and consultant with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston and adjunct professor with Temple University Law School and Drake University School of Law. His legal services practice included representation of low-income consumers in mortgage foreclosures, bankruptcies, student loan disputes, real estate matters, and consumer fraud class actions. He has published a number of research papers and articles on consumer law issues, and testified at federal agency hearings on bankruptcy reform and predatory mortgage lending. Mr. White currently serves as a member of the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council and was recently elected as a member of the American Law Institute. He lectures frequently at conferences and continuing legal education programs on a range of bankruptcy and consumer law topics. He is the author of "Risk-Based Pricing: Present and Future Research", Housing Policy Debate 15:503 (2004), and co-author with Prof. Cathy Lesser Mansfield of "Literacy and Contract" which appeared in the 2002:2 issue of Stanford Law and Policy Review. Mr. White received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his J.D. from the New York University School of Law.
Lauren Willis is a Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. Before coming to academia, Willis was a litigator in the Housing Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and worked with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on predatory mortgage lending litigation. In her lecture, panelist, and media appearances in the U.S., the E.U., and South Africa, Willis has discussed regulation of the U.S. home mortgage market, predatory lending, financial literacy education, behavioral decisionmaking, and a variety of consumer law topics. She is a member of the State Bars of Maryland and Massachusetts.
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NOTE
CRL may partner with other academic institutions or organizations in its research, and reimburse these groups for direct expenses associated with specific projects. As a general rule, CRL does not pay for overhead or indirect costs.
