Matt Baran

Matt Baran is the founder of Baran Studio Architecture, and as a licensed architect, developer, and builder, his work spans across disciplines and typologies. He has 25 years of experience in architecture that includes conceptualization, programming, design, project management, and construction in residential, commercial, community and theoretical projects of various scales. He has 15 years of experience in practice management and entrepreneurship, and his real estate development experience includes property evaluation and acquisition, financing, construction, lease up, and sale. 

Matt has received recognition for his design work that includes awards from the AIA, PCBC, Architizer, and Houzz. His work has been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and in Oakland, San Francisco and Sunset Magazines. His work has also been featured in the books "Studios and Workshops", "Tiny Interiors", "Digital Architectures" and "Intimacy". He has been a speaker at events for the AIA, ULI, and SPUR and has lectured and taught studios at UC Berkeley, USC, and The Academy of Art. Matt received his Bachelor of Architecture from USC and his Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley. 

Reid Bitzer

Reid co-directs all stages of acquisitions, design, development and construction for Bitzer Banker Development. Reid started his career in L.A. as a Development Associate for Festival Companies, a national retail developer. Reid then moved to Development Director for Regent Properties, a national development and investment company, where his projects included successfully entitling the largest residential development ever approved by the City of West Hollywood. He earned his Master of Real Estate Development degree with honors from the University of Southern California and his bachelor’s degree in Urban Land Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

Chris Calott

Christopher Calott, AIA, ULI, LF ‘12, is an award-winning architect, urban designer, academic and real estate developer. He is a principal at CALOTT + GIFFORD Architecture / Urban Design and a founding partner of the real estate development firm INFILL SOLUTIONS: Innovative Urban Design and Development. His two firms work together to create innovative regional urban typologies in mixed-use urban housing, dense infill developments, affordable housing, transit-oriented development, and vibrant public plazas in the Southwest, often working with urban Native American populations and traditional Hispanic communities in the region. 

Mary Corley

Mary Corley is Senior Vice President for Rosen Consulting Group, a leading independent real estate economics consulting firm, founded in 1990. Ms. Corley's industry knowledge includes macro and local economic trends, capital markets, affordable housing, and land use policy. She is the team lead for business development and client management, research collaborations and partnerships.

Prior to RCG, Ms. Corley was responsible for raising equity capital for BRIDGE Housing Corporation, a West Coast non-profit affordable housing developer. Prior to BRIDGE, she served as Executive Director for the University of California, Berkeley's Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics Policy Advisory Board. Ms. Corley began her professional career as an aide to California Lt. Governor Leo T. McCarthy. Ms. Corley received a Master in City Planning from U.C. Berkeley and a B.A. in Sociology - Urban Studies from San Francisco State University. She is an active member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and serves as membership co-chair of Lambda Alpha International - Golden Gate Chapter. Board and advisory board service includes Bentley School Board of Trustees and the Chamberlin Family Foundation.

Carol Galante

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.  In her role as I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy, Professor Galante teaches graduate courses on housing policy and community development, including a semester-long studio intensive course on the design and finance of affordable housing development.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.

Stephen Engblom

Stephen Engblom, AIA, LEED AP, architect, is an Executive Vice President with AECOM, the world’s premier provider of integrated urban planning and infrastructure. As AECOM’s Global Director of Cities and SF Bay Area Executive, Stephen is committed to applying global best practice in urban policy and infrastructure strategies to enhance the environment, equity, and economy of our Bay Area cities. Mr. Engblom is a SPUR SF board member and is active in the Urban Land Institute and American Institute of Architects, contributes thought leadership to industry journals, and lectures and teaches at universities and institutes worldwide. He works fluidly with public and private sector leaders as well as between the worlds of urban infrastructure engineering and urban design. He is currently serving on the SPUR task force for the Places chapter of the SPUR Regional Strategy, and is a key thought leader in developing urban design solutions on how all model place types in the nine-county region can shoulder their responsibility in accommodating the next 50 years of growth while addressing. He also led one of 10 teams in the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge that asked how the SF Bay Area and its cities can optimize the next generation of infrastructure to support the region’s population growth and GDP while addressing the threats of sea level rise, severe storms, drought, flooding and earthquakes, and issues of affordability and inequity in the Bay Area.

Kristen Hall

Kristen Hall, AICP is an urban designer and city planner who specializes in complex urban infill projects in politically challenging landscapes. Her work centers on creating equitable, sustainable, and resilient communities. She has played a prominent role in the transformation of San Francisco's Central Waterfront, leading the urban design for a number of large, post-industrial projects, including Mission Rock and the Potrero Power Station.

Through her experience both in the US and internationally, she has worked across many different scales and contexts to design master plans, write guidelines, direct public outreach, lead entitlement processes, and create implementation strategies. She works with cities, private developers, institutions, and public-private partnerships - and this diversity of client experience enables her to effectively lead projects which require all parties to work together. Kristen’s core area of expertise is delivering projects that require innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stakeholder engagement.

Kristen holds a B.A. in Sociology from from Tulane and a Master of City Planning with Urban Design Certificate from MIT. She volunteers for several organizations dedicated to shoring up democractic infrastructure and racial equity through equal voting rights, civic engagement, and grassroots organizing, and she was recently appointed to the Design Review Board of the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission (BCDC).

Eric Harrison

Eric Harrison is Senior Vice President at Signature Development Group bringing expertise in land development with a focus on entitlements and complex approvals from governmental agencies.  These primary responsibilities include development and implementation of complex mixed-use projects. The most recent example is Brooklyn Basin, a 3,100 mixed-use residential community located on the Oakland Estuary. 

Eric's strengths in the development/entitlement process include schedules and analysis of risk factors, the assemblage and management of the design team, work with local agency staff, elected and appointed officials to obtain the land use entitlements and permits and develop/implement special tax districts to fund maintenance of public improvements.

Eric currently serves as a member of American Planning Association, Board of Directors, On Lok Inc, Board of Directors On Lok Community Housing Inc., Board of Directors MidPen Housing and member of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. He received both his B.A. in Geography and M.A. in Real Estate from CSU Long Beach.

Kristina Hill

Kristina Hill is an associate professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an expert on urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to urban design. Her current focus is on ways to adapt urban districts and shorezones to the new challenges associated with climate change. Kristina also has extensive experience in practice. She served as the chair of the Seattle Monorail Authority, and after Hurricane Katrina, she became a member of the Dutch-American engineering and design team that developed New Orleans' ambitious water management strategy. She continues to collaborate with colleagues in The Netherlands and elsewhere to understand the potential for lower-cost, dynamic development designs to help protect coastal communities as sea levels rise. Kristina was chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Virginia from 2007-2010, and was a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Virginia before coming to California. She was honored as a Fellow of the Urban Design Institute in New York, and has conducted research in Stockholm, Sweden, as a Fulbright Scholar.

Caleb Inman

Cal Inman is a Bay Area developer who builds creative mix-used projects including office, retail, mini-lot homes, and multifamily housing. His projects take a fresh approach to small infill with a focus on innovative design and construction techniques, and community-oriented placemaking.

A graduate of the University of Southern California with a focus on real estate finance, Mr. Inman started his career working with cutting edge developer Rick Holiday on adaptive reuse and ground up multifamily projects in Oakland and San Francisco. He started his own practice on 2008. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and young son. 

Paula Kirlin

Paula Kirlin is a partner at Monchamp Meldrum LLP where she practice in the areas of land use and environmental law, with a focus on complex, mixed-use projects. She has extensive experience advising on all aspects of the local land use entitlement process in California, including due diligence, land use entitlements and permitting, and compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Paula also has experience advising regional and local government bodies, including planning departments, agency executives, Planning Commissions, and elected officials and boards, on planning and development, public-private partnerships, intergovernmental relations and agreements, the establishment and management of public finance districts, and a wide range of regulatory, policy and enforcement matters. Paula currently serves on the SPUR San Jose Policy Board and volunteers as a mentor through the East Bay College Fund. Paula’s pro bono work is dedicated to human rights and immigration advocacy. 

Amy Leedham

Amy Leedham, AIA, LEED AP, WELL AP is an Associate with Atelier Ten, a global environmental design consulting firm, in the San Francisco office. As a senior project manager, Amy combines her expertise in building physics and architecture to foster communication between the design team and technical consultants to deliver high performance projects across many sectors.

From corporate sustainability requirements, to mixed use urban developments, to single family homes, Amy has successfully managed projects of all scales with a wide range of ambitious goals including net zero energy, zero water waste, enhanced occupant health, and carbon neutrality. She is always looking for ways to advance the sustainability building industry but also recognizes the importance of meeting clients where they are. Amy leads Atelier Ten’s carbon practice and has greatly advanced the firm’s approach and process to reduce the carbon impact of projects across the company. She regularly participates in industry events and recently presented "The Missing Pieces: The Next Frontier of Zero Carbon" at the Greenbuild conference. Some notable projects include the UC Merced 2020 Campus, the Candlestick Point Development, UCLA Geffen Hall, and the new San Mateo County Office Building.

Beyond Atelier Ten, Amy has taught sustainable design practices at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and lectured at the Architectural Association in London. She also represented the USA at the International Trail Running World Championship in 2018. 

Amanda Monchamp

Amanda Monchamp is a partner at Monchamp Meldrum LLP. She practices in the areas of land use, natural resources, and environmental law with an emphasis on project land use entitlement, regulatory permitting, and litigation regarding the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) throughout California.

Amanda advises clients on various aspects of complex residential, commercial and industrial land use and real estate development projects, as well as linear projects for utilities such as telecommunications, power companies, transportation and transit projects.

Amanda is currently a lecturer in Land Use Controls at the University of California Berkeley College of Environmental Design’s Master of Real Estate Development + Design program. She is also a Planning Commissioner for the City of Oakland. 

Greg Morrow

Greg joins CED from Pepperdine University where he served as Executive Director of the Sands Institute of Real Estate, Academic Director of the Master in Science of Real Estate program, and Fred Sands Executive Professor in Real Estate. Previously, he was the Richard Parker Professor in Metropolitan Growth & Change at the University of Calgary, a joint appointment in the Haskayne School of Business and Faculty of Environmental Design.

His research interests and teaching is in the areas of real estate development, housing, metropolitan growth, and sustainable community development. He has served on the Calgary Planning Commission, LA County Homeless Initiative (Measure H) Citizens Oversight Advisory Board, and ULI LA Leadership Council. He has a Ph.D. from UCLA in urban planning, an urban design certificate and masters in city planning and architecture from MIT.

Paul Peninger

Paul Peninger is an urban economist specializing in housing policy, development feasibility analysis and real estate transaction support.  A recognized housing policy expert, Paul has successfully led affordable and workforce housing plans, implementation projects and policy studies for both large and small jurisdictions across the country.  In addition to housing, Paul specializes in real estate feasibility analysis and finance spanning the full range of land use and development types. He teaches land economics in the Masters in Urban Design program at UC Berkeley, and is former Vice President for Economics at AECOM’s San Francisco office. Paul is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley.

Kyle Rawlins

Kyle Rawlins is a co-founder of BIG Oakland, a coworking space dedicated to the architecture, engineering, construction and real estate industry. In 2018, the San Francisco Business Times included BIG in its Upstart 50 business creators of the Bay Area. He is also a co-founder of Oakland-based Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), a public interest architecture and real estate development firm focused on addressing the root causes of mass incarceration. DJDS is a winner of the ArtPlace America 2017 National Creative Creative Placemaking Fund.

Kyle has been active in the analysis, financing, design, development, construction and management of real estate in North and South America for more than 20 years. In addition to pursuing development projects, Kyle has consulted to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the development of a solution for how might NYCHA, as landlords with a mission to help residents grow their income and assets, spearhead the creation of an economic development model to empower unemployed, unbanked, credit challenged “NYCHApreneurs” so that they may access capital to build sustainable, livable wage producing businesses.

Before attending graduate school, Kyle worked as a mergers and acquisitions financial analyst for Salomon Brothers in New York City. While at Salomon, Mr. Rawlins focused on restructuring distressed companies in the retail, media, consumer products, and transportation sectors.  Mr. Rawlins’ professional experiences have enabled him to develop a highly sophisticated knowledge of the capital markets, deal structuring, and financial analysis. Kyle has also worked for the Chase Manhattan Bank, Hines and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Architects (HOK).  His professional design experience includes the redevelopment of the Uganda Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

Kyle is an Echoing Green Fellow - 2016 Black Male Achievement Cohort. Kyle holds a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a recent addition to the faculty community of the University of California, Berkeley where he taught equitable community development for the Master of Real Estate Development + Design program.

Carolina Reid

Carolina Reid is Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning and the Faculty Research Advisor for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Carolina specializes in housing and community development, with a specific focus on access to credit, homeownership and wealth inequality. Her recently published research focuses on the impact of the foreclosure crisis on low-income and minority communities, the role of the Community Reinvestment Act during the subprime crisis, and the importance of anti-predatory lending laws for consumer protection. Carolina brings nearly two decades of applied work experience to her research and teaching. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, Carolina worked for a year at the Center for Responsible Lending, where she undertook policy analyses on how provisions in Dodd-Frank could affect future access to credit for lower-income and minority households. Before that, Carolina served as the Research Manager for the Community Development Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for six years. At the SF Fed, Carolina published numerous journal and policy articles on topics related to housing and community development, and helped to build the capacity of local stakeholders — including banks, nonprofits, and local governments — to undertake community development activities. Carolina has also held positions with the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., the Environmental Health and Social Policy Center in Seattle, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project.         

Mark Sawicki

Mark Sawicki has forged a unique 30+ year career across both the public and private sectors, from real estate asset management and small business startups, to economic and community development, which now informs his current role providing municipal consulting services as a Director at RSG, Inc. His work includes real estate advisory services, developer selection and negotiations, public/private partnerships, affordable housing development, fiscal and economic impact analyses, municipal service reviews, and economic development strategy and policy analysis.

Mark served five years as Economic & Workforce Development Director with the City of Oakland, negotiating and implementing over a dozen public/private development projects that will yield over 2400 homes and 1.7 million square feet of commercial space. Prior to Oakland, he was Community & Economic Development Director in the City of Vallejo, responsible for the building & planning divisions, the ongoing redevelopment and base reuse of Mare Island Naval Shipyard, renegotiation of the Waterfront development plan, and update of the General Plan and zoning code. As Economic Development & Housing Manager in San Carlos, he facilitated development of a 3 acre downtown surface parking lot and assembled land for a 6 acre hotel project. Mark also served five years on the City of Berkeley’s Housing Advisory Commission. Earlier in his career, he co-founded and was CFO of an internet startup, and managed a $275 million national real estate portfolio. Mark holds a BS in Finance from NYU and a Masters in Public Policy from the Goldman School at UC Berkeley.

Elizabeth “Libby” Seifel

Elizabeth (Libby) Seifel has focused her professional career on creating sustainable infill developments, structuring successful public-private partnerships and encouraging the revitalization of communities. As president of Seifel Consulting, Libby has advised hundreds of public and private clients on how to plan, fund and develop a broad variety of projects that achieve triple bottom line objectives, where sustainability and social equity are pursued in equal measure alongside strong financial returns. She has prepared successful strategies to catalyze mixed income housing communities and build more than 10,000 affordable housing units. Libby actively promotes best practices in sustainable development, urban redevelopment and affordable housing through her teaching and writing activities, serving as the editor and author on a number of publications for the Urban Land Institute and other professional associations. Prior to founding her firm, Libby served as Associate-in-Charge of Williams-Kuebelbeck & Associates, overseeing the firm’s economic and management consulting practice. She also served as the founding Executive Director of Tent City Corporation, the non-profit developer of a ULI award-winning mixed income housing development in downtown Boston. Libby is a certified planner (A.I.C.P.) and an elected member of LAI, the Honorary Society of Land Economists. She was recently honored for her positive influence on real estate development, joining the Hall of Fame for the Northern California Women of Influence in Real Estate.

Carl D. Shannon

Carl Shannon is the Senior Managing Director and Regional Director—Northern California at Tishamn Speyer. Mr. Shannon is responsible for Tishman Speyer’s portfolio in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest. He has been charged with overseeing the development of various signature developments, such as Lumina, The Infinity, and Mira, three condominium projects adjacent to San Francisco’s waterfront, and three office buildings at Foundry Square III, 222 Second Street and 555 Mission in the central business district. He is currently working with the San Francisco Giants on Mission Rock. Mr. Shannon is also a member of the Investment and Management Committees. Before joining Tishman Speyer in 1998, he worked for both GE Capital and The Prudential Insurance Company of America. Mr. Shannon received an AB, magna cum laude, and graduated with an MBA, with high honors, from Harvard University.

Lydia Tan

Lydia Tan is a real estate professional with 3 decades of experience in the industry, with roles at for-profit, non-profit and institutional platforms.  Her project experience has been focused on high impact development and public-private partnerships, involving more than $6 billion in mixed income, mixed-use and affordable communities.

Currently, Ms. Tan is consulting on a variety of assignments, ranging from organizational development, governance, and capitalization strategies, to transformational urban redevelopment efforts. She was recently Managing Director, Real Estate for the Oakland A’s, where she led the efforts to create a new ballpark district at Howard Terminal and redevelopment of the Oakland Coliseum. Prior to this she was SVP, Head of U.S. Development at Bentall Kennedy, overseeing real estate development activity for the company. Prior to joining Bentall Kennedy, Ms. Tan was EVP, Director of Northern California Operations at Related California, where she launched the company’s Northern California office and spearheaded the development of a portfolio of mixed income, mixed use projects. Prior to that, she was EVP in charge of Real Estate Development and Finance at BRIDGE Housing Corporation, where she oversaw the production of several affordable and mixed income communities, participated as part of the executive management team, and co-led an investment partnership with CalPERS.

She currently serves on the board of directors of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, the S.H. Cowell Foundation, and Thoits Brothers Inc.  She is a member of the Stanford Real Estate Council and Urban Land Institute.  Ms. Tan holds a BA Architecture degree from UC Berkeley, an MBA from Stanford University, and is a registered Architect in California.

Dennis Williams

Dennis Williams has been a mortgage banker with the San Francisco office of Northmarq Capital, LLC (formerly Trowbridge, Kieselhorst & Company) since 1988.  His company arranges permanent, construction, bridge, mezzanine and equity financing for income property.  Currently a Managing Director at Northmarq, Dennis has arranged nearly $8 billion of income property financing with institutional capital sources and has been one of the company’s top originators since becoming part of Northmarq in 2000.  Property types financed include office, research & development, retail, multi-family, hospitality and industrial real estate. 

Dennis received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 1988 and his AB with a double major in Political Science and Economics from U.C. Berkeley in 1984.  He currently lectures at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where he has taught a semester long MBA course entitled Real Estate Development since 2004.  Dennis previously taught an upper division undergraduate course, Real Estate Finance & Investment, at Haas from 2002-04 and at USF’s McLaren School of Business from 1997-2003.  

Dennis served as president of the Bay Area Mortgage Association (BAMA) from 1997-98, and as President of the SF Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) in 1995 and 2002.   Dennis has acted as a moderator and guest speaker at multiple presentations to BAMA, NAIOP (SF & Silicon Valley Chapters), Mortgage Bankers Association, Belden Club, Urban Land Institute, Fisher Center RE Conference, the Korean Executive RE Symposium, City National Bank, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, AICPA and Northmarq Capital. He has also served as the Chair of the NAIOP Sponsored Cal-Stanford Golden Shovel Competition since 2000.