Andrea Daskalakis is a skilled, innovative financial analyst and project finance specialist – talents honed after years of working with the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp. (MHIC) as chief investment officer.

But it’s the results of her skills and efforts with MHIC – a nonprofit lender for affordable housing and community development – that are most rewarding.

“I always feel so satisfied when I work on these transactions and make possible projects that wouldn’t necessarily be done,” she said. “It’s something I love to do. I feel, in my own way, I’m making a difference to improve the lives of the less fortunate.”

In the past 18 years, Daskalakis has helped build more than 3,500 units of affordable housing and funded more than 900,000 square feet of new commercial development in predominantly low-income neighborhoods.

“I am gratified on a personal basis because … I feel that I honor the memory of my parents, who experienced first-hand issues of social injustice and who worked tirelessly to alleviate the inequities that it creates,” she said.

 

Father’s Inspiration

Her father, Chris Ronson, came to the United States as a boy after his family was expelled from Turkey in a forced population exchange with Greece. But he was turned away at Ellis Island because of an infection in one of his fingers, and sent back to Greece.

After returning and going through Ellis Island a second time, Ronson and his family moved to upstate New York. He put himself through medical school and became a doctor, caring for many low-income families in the area.

Prior to joining MHIC, Daskalakis was a senior executive and commercial real estate development manager at BayBank. She also served as the bank’s senior Community Redevelopment Act lender and community representative.

Her interest in community development led her to MHIC. Daskalakis has since been on the “cutting edge” of several complex and critical innovations in real estate finance, community development and affordable housing, said Mark Hess, director of acquisitions and development at Norwood-based real estate management and investment firm HallKeen Management.

 

Underwriting Firsts

Many of Daskalakis’s underwriting innovations at MHIC are “firsts,” including:

The first transaction in the country to combine tax-exempt bonds in a leveraged New Markets Tax Credit transaction that financed the 100,000-square-foot Fenway Community Health Center project, working in conjunction with Joseph Morrell of MassDevelopment.

The first transaction in the country to combine a new federal loan guarantee program from the federal Department of Health and Human Services with federal and state historic tax credits in a leveraged New Markets Tax Credit transaction. The project was the Holyoke Community Health Center; the financing structure was replicated for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Center in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.

Daskalakis said she is gratified to be able to use her sophisticated financial analysis and project finance structuring skills to “support the extraordinary mission of MHIC.”

“Andrea’s work has allowed countless clients to better serve MHIC’s target populations and communities,” Hess said.

“Equally important,” he added, “Andrea has been a capable, compassionate mentor to colleagues, mission driven nonprofits, private developers and other finance professionals.”

Deborah Addis, a principal at Addis & Reed Consulting in Chesnut Hill, and a MHIC consultant, agreed.

“Andrea does her work with great skill and passion. And she takes time to be a mentor to young women in her profession,” Addis told Banker & Tradesman.

Daskalakis has a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and an MBA from Simmons College School of Management.

Andrea Daskalakis

by Banker & Tradesman time to read: 2 min
0