NAHT is pleased to welcome Amber Seely-Marks to the team. With nearly 20 years of prior experience serving the affordable housing industry, Amber specializes in all aspects of the development process. Amber joined National Affordable Housing Trust (NAHT) in 2022 in the Development Advisory Services team supporting clients in the strategy, approach and implementation of their development initiatives.
Prior to joining NAHT, Amber worked to redevelop urban places through direct development work, economic development and market analysis. In Amber’s 12+ years as a real estate developer, she advanced multiple development projects simultaneously through the varying stages of the development process for mission-oriented for-profit and non-profit organizations. This included sourcing and evaluating real-estate development opportunities, determining the financial feasibility for projects, cultivating public private partnerships and determining winning strategies for projects and portfolios.
Amber has directed multi-disciplinary teams, facilitated community involvement processes, obtained land use approvals, secured a variety of public and private sources of funding, procured professionals and negotiated contracts, managed design teams, led closing teams, oversaw the construction, lease up and stabilization of a diverse portfolio of multi-family, mixed-use, conventional and affordable real estate assets. Amber has managed the development of 675 residential units, comprise of small and large-scale, multi-phase, mixed-income and mixed-use developments, and totaling over $141 million in project costs in several municipalities and states including a decade in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Amber has a Masters in Urban Policy from Milano School of Management, The New School in New York City and a Certificate of Urban Redevelopment Excellence from the University of Pennsylvania obtained while working as Rockefeller Foundation Redevelopment Fellow in New Orleans.
Midwestern by upbringing, alternatively New Yorker and New Orleanian by choice, and urbanite at heart Amber now lives in the Cincinnati area where you may find her listening to audio-books, daydreaming about international travel, cooking, baking, or (more likely) momming with her three young rockstars.