EXCLUSIVE: Fannie Mae Shake-Up Cuts Women's Share In Leadership, Axes DEI Role

In the months following Bill Pulte’s appointment to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency, several board members and senior executives at Fannie Mae — including its top ethics and diversity, equity and inclusion officers — have exited, reshaping the agency’s leadership structure.

Four women left senior roles at Fannie Mae between January and May, according to a Bisnow analysis of archived versions of Fannie Mae’s website and LinkedIn pages. Three more women were forced off the board at the agency, which has faced added scrutiny as the president considers listing the lender on a major stock index. 

The exits come as the Trump administration pushes to realign Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with Republican priorities, including the potential privatization of the housing finance giants. The agency’s leadership changes, particularly in compliance and diversity roles, highlight the cultural and governance shift underway at an institution that touches trillions of dollars in U.S. housing finance. 

Bisnow uncovered the extent of the senior leadership shake-up as part of reporting for its annual DEI Data Series that will be published later this week. Fannie Mae had previously been a leader in gender representation in leadership, with women holding two-thirds of senior executive roles in 2024. 

Women now make up less than 46% of senior staff, still ahead of the 31% industry average across lenders and 28% representation rate for women across the broader commercial real estate sector’s executive suites.

Pulte, who also appointed himself as chairman of Fannie Mae’s board in March, has aggressively moved to shift the staffing and culture at the agencies he oversees. 

Nancy Jardini, a more than 15-year Fannie Mae veteran who was most recently chief compliance and ethics officer, left in March. She was reportedly fired by Pulte. A replacement hasn’t been announced. 

The agency also removed the chief diversity and inclusion officer role from its website sometime between Feb. 19 and March 26, according to website archives. After roughly three years in the role, Sharifa Anderson left Fannie Mae in May, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

The closure of Fannie Mae’s environmental, social and corporate governance group in late April was widely reported, including the elimination of staff focused on DEI initiatives. But Anderson’s exit from the agency and the elimination of her role from senior leadership hasn’t been previously reported. 

Chief Human Resources Officer Katie O'Connell Jones left the company in May, according to archives of Fannie Mae’s leadership page, a little less than three years into her tenure. She was replaced by Dave Hofman, a nearly 20-year veteran of the agency’s human resources department.  

Jones’ departure from the agency doesn’t appear to have been previously reported. 

Additionally, Michele Evans left her post as the head of multifamily operations. Her departure wasn’t announced or reported, but Multifamily Executive reported in January that former PGIM Real Estate executive Kelly Follain had taken over the role. 

Bisnow contacted five members of Fannie Mae’s communications team — including John Roscoe, who appeared on the agency's website as executive vice president for public relations in April — by email and phone and sent multiple requests for comment through the agency’s online portal over the past week but received no response. 

Jardini, Anderson, Jones and Evans didn’t respond to requests for comment on LinkedIn. Jardini and Evans didn’t return multiple phone calls. In a brief conversation, Jardini’s daughter declined to comment on her mother’s employment status.  

Pulte acknowledged that there had been significant changes at the top of Fannie Mae in social media posts on April 21. 

“To stay competitive in any business, change is good, but as of today, we do not see more executive changes (other than preannounced or already agreed upon departures) because we will now focus on growth, eliminating fraud, safety and soundness, and making homes affordable again!” Pulte said in the post. 

President Donald Trump said he would nominate Pulte to lead the FHFA in early January, before he moved into the White House. Pulte officially took over the FHFA on March 14 and quickly began shifting policy and shuffling senior leadership at the agencies it oversees to better align with the Trump administration’s goals. 

The FHFA head was previously best known as a vocal Trump supporter and social media personality, with more than 3 million followers on X. He is also the grandson of William Pulte, the founder and chairman of PulteGroup, one of the largest homebuilders in the country.

In a highly unusual move, he appointed himself chairman of Fannie Mae’s board of directors less than a week after his confirmation, while removing eight board members and adding four new ones, including himself. With the changes, Fannie Mae’s board went from having an even gender split to being two-thirds male. 

On the campaign trail, Trump decried DEI efforts and said that an “anti-white feeling” was worryingly gaining ground. As president, he codified those positions with executive orders and legal threats. 

After 4 years of the housing industry being asleep, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are officially “back in business”, ready to grow, and actively financing borrowers!

— Pulte (@pulte) April 21, 2025

A July 30 memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi includes guidance on what types of DEI-related policies are permissible under the White House’s interpretation of federal law. It includes best practices for corporations and examples of what it says are illegal policies.

The guidance is directed at firms that receive federal funding or do business with the federal government, but it has been widely adopted as a guide for corporations looking to avoid federal lawsuits. 

Fannie Mae, together with its corporate sibling Freddie Mac, ensures liquidity in mortgage markets by purchasing loans from lenders, bundling them into securities and offering them to investors with a guarantee that the loans will be paid. 

The agency is a behemoth — it had $4.3T in total assets and provided $178B in funding support to the housing market in the first half of 2025 — that supports the real estate debt markets by freeing up liquidity for lenders so they can underwrite more loans.

Fannie Mae has been under federal oversight since the Great Recession, when the government injected more than $1T into the broader mortgage market to keep it afloat. Under the existing conservatorship, the FHFA sets lending standards and limits for Fannie Mae while providing oversight. 

The Trump administration is considering a plan to privatize the agency and roll back or eliminate federal oversight. Releasing the agencies from conservatorship has been on the Republican agenda for more than a decade. An early effort to privatize the agencies during Trump’s first term was derailed by the pandemic.  

This summer, Trump has met with the CEOs of major U.S. banks to hear pitches about how to maximize the government’s return on investment in any initial public stock offering for the agencies.  

An IPO could raise up to $30B and value the two firms at roughly $500B, with anywhere from 5% to 15% of the entities’ stock being offered to investors. The White House is also weighing a plan to combine the two mortgage giants into one firm before selling any of the government’s shares.

Pulte seems to favor a combined entity, posting a promotional video in August for a hypothetical Great American Mortgage Corp.