Preparing Affordable Housing for Climate Funding

Jonathan Schrag currently serves as the Deputy Climate Chief and Director of Investment for Decarbonization and Resilience in the Office of Climate, Innovation and Resilience for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In that role he focuses on IRA strategy for Massachusetts and developing funding and financing strategies for resilience and decarbonization. With a specialization in regulatory strategy and innovation for the energy transition, previous projects have included: • Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, co-authored recommendations in docket 20-80 for a new regulatory framework to encourage the transition of gas utilities in Massachusetts. • Deputy Administrator of the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities where he led a grid modernization planning process and an investigation into the January 2019 natural gas incident on Aquidneck Island • Executive director of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the cap and invest program for the power sector across ten northeastern states.

Amy Stitely serves as the Undersecretary for Strategy and Climate at the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. In this role, Amy is responsible for developing and implementing broad policy, program, and organizational strategy to meet the state’s housing and climate-related goals. She works across programs, agencies, and communities to accelerate decarbonization and increase climate resilience. In her past eleven years of state service, Amy has led several large-scale initiatives including the Covid-19 Eviction Diversion Initiative and public housing reform. Prior to becoming a public servant, Amy worked as a planning consultant for disaster recovery, energy efficiency, and workforce development initiatives. In her downtime, Amy enjoys attending seasonal festivals with her family and serving on the Board of Directors for Groundwork USA – a network of 21 locally-based organizations devoted to transforming the natural and built environment of low-resource communities to advance health, equity, and resilience.

Kelsey Read is a Program Director on the high performance buildings team at MassCEC and has been with MassCEC since 2014. He led MassCEC’s efforts in partnership with the Department of Energy Resources on the $45 million Mass Solar Loan program and a variety of other efforts supporting the growth of solar in Massachusetts, market growth in building decarbonization, and innovative approaches to climate finance. He is leading MassCEC’s efforts on the upcoming implementation of the Commonwealths Solar For All programming. Kelsey has a degree in Economics and Physics from Bowdoin College and has previously worked in economic and environmental research and data analytics.

Benjamin Silverman – CPHC, LEED AP: BD+C – Benjamin is the Residential Program Manager with the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources’ Energy Efficiency Team. There he leads up residential energy efficiency programming including federal efficiency and electrification efforts like HER and HEAR. Before starting with DOER he was a Program Manager with the City of Boston’s Environment Department where he led management of the City’s BERDO benchmarking policy and was the technical lead in development of the BERDO 2.0 building performance standard. Benjamin has also worked for the Institute for Market Transformation, the City of Oakland, and the City of New York.

Maggie Super Church is Director of Policies and Programs for the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank (MCCB). In this role, she is responsible for leading the development and implementation of financing solutions for single-family and multi-family housing that advance the Commonwealth's building sector decarbonization goals. Prior to joining MCCB, Maggie was a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where she contributed to a forthcoming book on climate and community development co-published by LISC and Enterprise Community Partners. She previously served as Vice President for Healthy and Resilient Communities at the Conservation Law Foundation and co-led the creation of multi-investor funds for healthy neighborhoods in partnership with the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation. Maggie holds a master’s degree in City Planning from MIT, a master’s degree in Urban Design from the Edinburgh College of Art, and a BA in Architecture from Yale University. The MCCB will make investments that measurably reduce emissions and contribute to the production and preservation of affordable rental and homeownership housing across the Commonwealth. The MCCB is situated at MassHousing, effectively combining the agency's 50-plus years of experience delivering complex financial transactions and structuring public-private housing finance solutions with a new clean finance vehicle dedicated to decarbonizing Massachusetts's affordable housing stock. The MCCB's primary investment vehicle, the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank Fund, is seeded with $50 million from the state of Massachusetts and will aggregate additional capital from state, federal, private, and philanthropic sources.

Emily Jones serves as the Deputy Director for LISC Massachusetts. In this role, Emily oversees Green Homes program work, leads ongoing policy and advocacy efforts, and supports organizational operations related to resource development and data management. Before joining LISC in 2016, Emily was Director of Partnerships for Union Capital, a nonprofit that transforms social capital into opportunity. Emily has also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, and worked and served as an AmeriCorps Member with City Year Boston. Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography and a master’s degree in Public Policy.