Welcoming Remarks

• 

  Adena Ishii

  Mayor

  City of Berkeley

Unleashing Investment Potential in East Bay

Exploring Opportunities, Updates in Zoning Requirements & Planning Code Changes

• 

  Nhan Nguyen Le

  Nhan Nguyen Le is the CEO and Founder of Valiance Capital, a Berkeley-based real estate investment firm specializing in value-add and ground up development in student housing and multifamily. Valiance is a vertically integrated owner-operator with over 1,000 beds under management in Berkeley. With an AUM of over $300 million, aggregated across a 26-property portfolio with a growing pipeline in Berkeley, Valiance is one of the most active and leading market participants. Valiance’s in-house property management division, The Berkeley Group, is amongst the leading specialized student housing management firms in the market, with a nearly perfect 100% year-over-year occupancy, over the past 12 years. Recently, Valiance and The Berkeley Group has become the proud student housing partner of Cal Athletics. Nhan graduated from UC Berkeley and currently lives in Elmwood, Berkeley. For more information visit: www.valiancecap.com

  Valiance Capital

  CEO & Founder

  Nhan Nguyen Le

  CEO & Founder

  Valiance Capital

• 

  Riaz Taplin

  Riaz Taplin has been thinking about workforce housing for most of his professional life. Growing up in a real estate family, Riaz detoured early in his career from the family business to develop his own style by founding a design/build firm and developing over 50 ultra-luxury residences in the Bay Area. Completing his last project just before the great recession, Riaz refocused his vision to workforce housing in Oakland. Over the next decade, Riaz built a portfolio of over 1,300 units in the workforce housing category. In the process, Riaz consistently worked to innovate market-rate approaches to workforce housing, also known as naturally-occurring affordable housing. In successive projects and ventures, Riaz explored co-living, adaptive reuse micro-units, student housing, and traditional ground-up construction – all of which led to the firm’s custom workforce housing solution – the ABD Studio. Today, Riaz leads Riaz Capital, a vertically integrated workforce housing developer and institutional-grade sponsor with a core team of over fifty professionals managing a portfolio of over 1,300 units, and with over 1,000 residences in the pipeline. Riaz is a board member of the Oakland Promise, the urban planning think tank SPUR, and co-chair of the American India Foundation SF Bay Area board. He earned a B.A. in Economic History from the London School of Economics.

  Riaz Capital

  CEO and Founder

  Riaz Taplin

  CEO and Founder

  Riaz Capital

• 

  JP Walsh

  JP Walsh is the Director of Finance for Panoramic Interests, a development firm that has been building housing, live-work space, and commercial property in the Bay Area since 1990. The firm has focused on dense mixed-use, mixed-income, infill developments, typically financed with private funds. All the firm’s projects incorporate the Smart Growth principles designed to discourage auto use, mitigate sprawl, encourage local business, and enhance the pedestrian streetscape in the places where they are located. JP received a Master of Laws with a concentration in real estate from UC Berkeley and obtained the CFA certificate in 2013.

  Panoramic Interests

  Director

  JP Walsh

  Director

  Panoramic Interests

• 

  Stanley Saitowitz

  Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects Inc. is a San Francisco based firm which has been in practice for close to 40 years. We have a body of completed work ranging from single family houses in landscapes to large scale urban and institutional projects, both local and national. What is common to all our work is our commitment to beautiful, functional and memorable buildings: we strive for the highest design qualities to create the most elevating spaces with intense attention to materials and details. Stanley Saitowitz is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. This academic affiliation is an important aspect of our approach. Our work is both theoretical, and based on research and ideas, and practical, focused on functionality, economy and optimization. We are interested in buildings which are more than themselves - buildings that connect to their surroundings and charge the spaces around them. Working in our home town of San Francisco has taught us important lessons about architecture’s role in the building of cities. And while we strive to invent outstanding individual buildings, we are convinced that they become even more important when they add to the urban qualities and life of the cities they are part of. Rather than self-expression, we are focused on the idea that architecture is an apparatus for others to express themselves though. We aim to create buildings as frameworks, instruments that facilitate occupation.

  Natoma Architects

  Design Principal

  Stanley Saitowitz

  Design Principal

  Natoma Architects

• 

  Todd Williams

  Todd represents clients in the broad spectrum of land use, real estate and environmental issues in both litigation and administrative proceedings. He works with private clients and public entities, including landowners and developers of residential, infill, commercial and industrial property, as well as local agencies, providing property entitlement processing and local government land use approvals; CEQA compliance and litigation; planning and zoning law advice; and real property litigation. He also has experience with infill project streamlining, density bonus and housing laws, affordable housing and historic preservation regulations, as well as advising clients on public-private partnerships, the Subdivision Map Act, the Williamson Act, and cannabis land use regulations, along with easement and boundary dispute matters. A contributing editor on the 2010 – 2011 edition of State and Local Government Land Use Liability, and a reviewer of the 2012 and 2013 editions of the Municipal Law Handbook, Todd also has spoken throughout the state on land use law, with particular emphasis on CEQA.

  Fennemore

  Attorney

  Moderator

  Todd Williams

  Attorney

  Fennemore

Navigating the Future of Market-Rate & Affordable Housing & Getting Projects to Pencil

The Impact of the New Administration on Housing Policy, Partnering with the City, Initiatives Shaping Development & Overcoming Hurdles

• 

  Emily Weinstein

  Director of Housing & Community Development

  City of Oakland

• 

  Marc Babsin

  In addition to 15 years of experience in real estate development, Mr. Babsin is an attorney and CPA. Mr. Babsin holds a BS in Accountancy from the University of Illinois, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a Master in City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

  Emerald Fund

  President

  Marc Babsin

  President

  Emerald Fund

• 

  Nora Collins

  Ms. Collins serves as VP at AvalonBay. Since joining the company in 2017 she has led a number of projects, from entitlement through lease up around the Bay Area. She has worked extensively on mixed-use, mixed-income master planned communities and is currently leading a 1,100 unit Master Planned Project with Bridge Housing in the city of San Francisco. Prior to joining AvalonBay, she worked in retail and mixed-use development for EDENS, a retail REIT based in Washington DC, where she was responsible for placemaking and lease-up of a 2-million-square-foot TOD. Nora is on the Executive Committee for the Housing Action Coalition, on the steering committee for the Urban Land Institute, and a member of SPUR and the UCLA Anderson Real Estate Association. She received a Master’s in Business University of California Los Angeles and a Bachelor’s Degree from Bates College.

  AvalonBay

  VP

  Nora Collins

  VP

  AvalonBay

• 

  Jeremy Harris

  Director, Development

  oWow

• 

  Carolyn Johnson

  C.J. joined the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative in 2019 as its first Executive Director and is the founding CEO of the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation, which was formed in 2020 by the Collaborative. She has more than thirty years of experience in entrepreneurship and business management, non-profit operations, finance and commercial real estate including development, financing, and brokerage. She is a native of Oakland, California and a proud graduate of Castlemont High School. She brings to the Black Cultural Zone her homegrown knowledge of East Oakland, where she was born and raised, and her entrepreneurial, management, and transactional experience garnered within the Bay Area. C.J. is an entrepreneur and has worked directly with entrepreneurs and small business owners at several leading technical assistance providers in the area, including the Alameda County Small Business Development Center, Women's Initiative for Self Employment, and CEO Women. As a manager, she created the Consulting and Grants Programs at Community Visions (formerly Northern California Community Loan Fund), as its first Director, including the Facility Fitness Nonprofit Commercial Real Estate Training Curriculum and Pre-Development Support Programs like orgspaces.org (a predecessor to Spacesforgood.org). At Community Visions, C.J. was also involved in underwriting, funding and providing consulting expertise for Cultural Hubs and Nonprofit Commercial Development projects in San Francisco, Oakland and throughout Northern California, including the Museum of the African Diaspora, Youth Radio, Eastside Arts Alliance, and Destiny Arts Center, with a combined development project value in excess of $300 million. As a Broker, she has completed over $250 million in Investment Sales transactions and has leased hundreds of spaces throughout the bay area, particularly Oakland. Most recently, she was the Broker and Director of Commercial Real Estate at the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, a leading Bay Area affordable housing developer. In this role, she managed commercial investment sales, marketing and leasing, development, facility management, financial management and property operations. Currently, in addition to her role with the Black Cultural Zone, she is a tenured Professor at the College of Alameda in the Business Department and has launched the Peralta Community College District's first fully online Entrepreneurship Certificate Program. C.J. has a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology with a specialization in Business Administration from the University of California at Los Angeles; a Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Administration from the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley; a Master of Business Administration (with Honors - Beta Gamma Sigma) in Marketing, Corporate Finance and Real Estate Finance from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; and her Doctorate (EdD) in Educational Leadership from Saint Mary’s College of California.

  Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation

  CEO

  Carolyn Johnson

  CEO

  Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation

• 

  Scott Littlehale

  Scott Littlehale, Executive Research Analyst for the Nor Cal Carpenters Union, is a leader in developing strategic initiatives focused on making construction trades work a family-sustaining career. Over the 22 years that he has worked on behalf of Carpenters Union members [Scott/Littlehale] has published white papers on construction workforce issues and helped craft pro-worker standards that have been integrated into state and local laws. He served on the Technical Committee of the Committee to House the Bay (better known as “CASA”) and on ABAG’s Housing Methodology Committee. [Scott/Littlehale] earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree with distinction and departmental honors at Stanford University. He passed Ph.D.-qualifying exams in Political Science at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Mr. Littlehale has worked with and for the trade union movement since 1997. A California native, he has lived in the East Bay for two-thirds of his life.

  Nor Cal Carpenters Union

  Executive Research Analyst

  Scott Littlehale

  Executive Research Analyst

  Nor Cal Carpenters Union

• 

  Sheena Fitzpatrick

  Sheena’s career began at UCSF Medical Center, where she worked closely with surgical patients and their families, creating a warm and welcoming environment even in high-stress situations. While earning her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University, she developed strong skills in logistical coordination, communication, and problem-solving—skills that later became instrumental in her transition to Rockaway Construction. With extensive experience in multifamily renovations, Sheena has successfully managed many projects across the Bay Area completing renovations in tenant-occupied apartments. She understands the unique challenges of working in active living environments, balancing efficiency with tenant needs to minimize disruption while ensuring high-quality results. Her expertise spans every phase of construction, from planning and permitting to execution and completion. Sheena is known for her ability to foster collaboration among stakeholders, maintain strict project timelines, and uphold the highest standards of quality and functionality. By blending her human-centered approach with technical project management, Sheena brings a strategic yet people-first mindset to every project, ensuring that both residents and property owners benefit from thoughtful, well-executed construction solutions.

  Rockaway Construction

  Principal

  Moderator

  Sheena Fitzpatrick

  Principal

  Rockaway Construction