When: Wednesday, January 19, 2005, 6:30pm to 8pm
Where: Hafele Showroom--Madison Park (25 E. 26th St.)

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Many thanks to our speakers, Lydia Tom from Enterprise New York and Jill Edwards from Merrill Lynch Community Development Company, and our hosts at Hafele Showroom, for making this forum possible.

See pictures from the forum.
Download Lydia Tom's Powerpoint presentation (approx. 57 MB).

Learn more about Enterprise's Green Initiatives.

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SPEAKER BIOS

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Lydia Tom

Lydia Tom in currently the Director of Housing and Finance at The Enterprise Foundation, an organization devoted to rebuilding communities and seeing that all low-income people have the opportunity for fit and affordable housing.
Ms. Tom has over twenty-five years of experience in community development and neighborhood revitalization, including 20 years in program design and direct preservation, production and development of affordable housing. She has provided more than 10 years of technical assistance to community based not-for-profits and neighborhood entrepreneurs in program design, project development, financial packaging and organizational development. This includes working with local and state government, private sector lenders, investors and other intermediary organizations to design and implement housing development programs from assembling resources, matching partners with sites to financial packaging and project management, including public reviews and approval processes.

Since 1987, The Enterprise Foundation has assisted in the production of over 17,000 units of affordable housing. The Enterprise Foundation has provided over $1 billion in equity, grants and loans in projects to more than 85 community developers throughout New York City in some of its most challenging neighborhoods that have made remarkable turnarounds from Manhattan's Lower East Side to Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant to the South Bronx.

Before working with The Enterprise Foundation, Ms. Tom served as Director of Neighborhood Preservation for Asian Americans for Equality. She has a BA from the City College of New York and a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from the Pratt Institute.

Ms. Tom is also a Board Member of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

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Jill Edwards

Ms. Edwards currently serves as Vice President of the Merrill Lynch Community Development Company, LLC, where she manages the affordable housing tax credit equity portfolio and provides debt financing to community development intermediaries. She spearheads the CDC's lending and investing activities in the New Jersey market and is responsible for several other community development initiatives. Ms. Edwards also assists the CDC with communications strategy and government relations.

Ms. Edwards joined Merrill Lynch in January 2001, after serving as Acting Director for Economic Development in Trenton, New Jersey. In her role with the City, Ms. Edwards was responsible for all business recruitment, retention and development and implementation of the city's overall economic development strategy and was a member of numerous nonprofit boards and quasi-governmental agencies. During her tenure, she also managed Trenton's Brownfield economic redevelopment initiative and led a regionally-focused eco-industrial roundtable.

Prior to this, Ms. Edwards worked for the State of New Jersey's Office of State Planning and Department of Environmental Protection. Earlier in her career, Ms. Edwards ran a downtown redevelopment program in New Jersey and worked in institutional sales for an investment banking firm in New York City.

Ms. Edwards graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with High Distinction from the Pennsylvania State University and holds a Master of City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University. She is also a Leadership New Jersey Fellow, former Member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and is a certified Economic Development Professional. Jill currently represents Merrill Lynch as a member of the Affordable Housing Investor Council and serves on the board of the New Jersey Chapter of Women in Housing & Finance, New York Junior Board of the Enterprise Foundation and Advisory Board of Garden State Affordable Housing.