Housing in Crisis, Housing in Community: A Conversation on the Complexities Shaping Atlanta and Beyond
Panel discussion addressing the affordable housing challenges in Atlanta
Hosted by Cati Stone and CHRIS 180
1030 Fayetteville Rd. SE, Atlanta
Program Description:
Housing affordability isn't just a headline, it's a lived reality touching every generation in our community. Join IWF Georgia for a candid conversation exploring how the housing crisis is reshaping lives across Atlanta and globally: from recent graduates and newly weds priced out of their first homes, to families navigating rising costs, to the working homeless.
This event brings together voices from across the housing landscape to discuss:
- The local and global forces driving today's housing complexities
- How these pressures uniquely affect young people, recent graduates, and seniors
- What community-driven solutions can look like, and how each of us can be part of them
Hosted at Chris 180, an Atlanta nonprofit on the front lines of supporting youth and families, this gathering is an opportunity to learn, connect, and consider what meaningful action looks like in our own backyard.
Featuring:
- Ashani O’Mard, President, Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership Inc. (ANDP)
- Renee Lewis Glover, Former Chief Executive Officer of the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA).
- Virginia Hepner, Corporate Director and Civic Volunteer (Moderating)
- Cati Diamond Stone, President & CEO, CHRIS 180
Speaker Bios:
Renée Lewis Glover
Renée Lewis Glover is Chief Strategic Officer and Co-Founder of Coretto Associates, where she helps leaders understand the forces reshaping their institutions, identify challenges that may not yet be fully visible, and prepare for futures their existing structures may not have been designed to serve.
Renée is nationally recognized for helping transform the way the United States approaches the redevelopment of distressed public housing. As President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlanta Housing Authority, she pioneered a master-planned, mixed-finance, mixed-income model that replaced concentrated poverty with economically integrated, amenity-rich communities. Her work challenged long-standing assumptions about public housing and demonstrated that lasting community transformation requires more than replacing buildings. It requires connecting housing to education, employment, transportation, neighborhood investment, and meaningful access to economic opportunity.
The approach advanced under Renée’s leadership influenced federal housing policy and redevelopment efforts in cities across the country. It also established her as a leading voice on the relationship among housing, economic mobility, institutional responsibility, and the long-term health of cities.
Throughout her career, Renée has worked with elected officials, governing boards, civic institutions, residents, and private-sector partners during periods of significant change, when decisions carried economic, social, and reputational consequences extending far beyond any single project. Her perspective is shaped by sustained responsibility for outcomes measured across leadership tenures and political cycles. She understands that institutions can remain deeply committed to their missions even as changing conditions require them to reconsider how those missions are carried forward.
At Coretto, Renée brings that experience to institutions confronting questions that cannot be resolved through short-term solutions or conventional approaches alone. She helps leaders distinguish immediate problems from deeper institutional challenges, understand what changing conditions require of them, and make difficult decisions with clarity, discipline, and a long-term view. Her work is grounded in the belief that preserving an institution’s purpose may require leaders to reconsider the structures, assumptions, and practices that once served it well.
Before joining the Atlanta Housing Authority, Renée practiced corporate finance law in Atlanta and New York. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Tricon Residential and as a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center Housing Commission. Her prior board service includes Fannie Mae, Enterprise Community Partners, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and Habitat for Humanity International.
Renée received the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2026 Visionary Award, the National Housing Conference’s 2025 Housing Visionary Award, and the Wesley Woods Foundation’s 2024 Heroes, Saints and Legends Award. She was named CEO of the Year by the Atlanta Business League in 2013, named Governingmagazine’s Public Official of the Year, and inducted into Affordable Housing Financemagazine’s Affordable Housing Hall of Fame. Her honors also include the Manhattan Institute’s Urban Innovator Award and the Urban Land Institute’s Dan Sweat Community Leadership Award. The Atlanta History Center recognized her as one of Atlanta’s Defining Women.
Renée earned a Bachelor of Arts from Fisk University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Juris Doctor from Boston University
Virginia A Hepner
Virginia Hepner is active in various corporate and community
activities, following five years as President and Chief Executive
Officer of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She
currently serves as a Director of Huntington Bank (Audit), National Vision Holdings, Inc (Nominating & Governance Chair) and Oxford Industries, Inc.
(Chair of Nominating, Governance and Compensation). Virginia continues to serve on several non-profit boards with her main focus being revitalization of the historic Westside Atlanta neighborhood
through the Westside Future Fund board and executive committee.
Other current civic advisory board service includes the Housing
and GoAtl Investment Committees of the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta,
the Penn Institute for Urban Research, WABE Foundation, Russell Innovation Center Finance Committee, Atlanta Jewish Film, and IWF Georgia.
In 2005 she retired from Wachovia Bank as an Executive Vice
President after a 25-year career in corporate finance with the firm.
Leadership roles included Managing Director of US Corporate
Finance, head of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Trading and
Atlanta Commercial Banking Director. From 2005-2022 Virginia was an active
investor in a real estate partnership for commercial properties in metro Atlanta.
She holds a bachelor's degree in finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and attended the J.L. Kellogg Graduate Business
School of Management at Northwestern University.
Virginia is honored to be a Life Trustee of the Woodruff Arts Center, and
Is grateful to be a recipient of the City of Atlanta Phoenix Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the Governor's Award for arts leadership in Georgia, and the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award honoring exemplary corporate board service by a female director.
Virginia is married to Malcolm Barnes and they have two children.
Ashani O’Mard
A 20+ year veteran in community development, Ashani O’Mard is a nationally respected affordable housing leader who blends a deep commitment to expanding pathways to prosperity with a track record of delivering results at scale. She currently serves as President of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), where she helps shape long-term strategy, strengthen organizational and financial capacity, and advance ANDP’s mission to create and preserve affordable housing across metro Atlanta.
In her role as President, Ms. O’Mard partners closely with the ANDP’s CEO and Board of Directors to guide enterprise-wide strategy, oversee cross-functional leadership, and position ANDP for sustained impact and growth. She plays a central role in capital strategy and external engagement, cultivating partnerships across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors to support mission-driven investment and systems-level change.
Previously, Ms. O’Mard served as ANDP’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Housing Investments, supporting multifamily housing development, portfolio performance, and cross-departmental initiatives that strengthened the organization’s effectiveness and sustainability. Earlier in her tenure at ANDP, she spent seven years as Senior Director of Capital Development and Director of Fund Development, overseeing charitable contributions and capital investments that fueled the organization’s expansion.
Before returning to ANDP, Ms. O’Mard was the Founding Executive Director of the Atlanta Affordable Housing Fund (AAHF), where she led the successful raise and deployment of a $15 million closed-end social impact fund focused on accelerating the supply of affordable housing. Under her leadership, AAHF demonstrated the power of innovative investment tools and later transitioned to the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, helping pave the way for the GoATL Affordable Housing Fund.
Earlier in her career, Ms. O’Mard worked in project management with private affordable housing developers in Cincinnati and Boston. Her experiences at the Model Group and Trinity Financial grounded her in the complexities of LIHTC transactions, capital structuring, and community-centered development, and continue to inform her leadership across development, fundraising, and CDFI fund management.
Ms. O’Mard currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation (Chair) and Housing Partnership Network’s Housing Production Fund. She is also a member of ULI Atlanta’s Livable Communities Council, the Wellesley Business Leadership Council, and the Westside Future Fund’s Real Estate Committee. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and the Harvard Kennedy School and has lived in Atlanta for over 16 years with her husband and two spirited teenaged children.
Cati Diamond Stone
Cati Diamond Stone is President and CEO of CHRIS 180, a leading Atlanta nonprofit focused on mental health, foster care and adoption, and support for youth experiencing homelessness. Since becoming CEO, she has led a significant organizational transformation, strengthening operations, sharpening strategic focus, and positioning the organization for long-term sustainability and measurable impact.
Prior to joining CHRIS 180, Stone spent more than 11 years with Susan G. Komen®, the world’s leading breast cancer organization. She first served as CEO of the Komen Greater Atlanta Affiliate, leading one of the organization's largest and most respected affiliates, before being appointed Vice President of Community Health for the global organization. In that role, she helped shape national community health strategy and expand programs and support services for individuals affected by breast cancer.
Before her nonprofit leadership career, Stone practiced law in both litigation boutique firms and global corporate environments.
Stone holds a Juris Doctor from The University of Alabama School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in English from The University of Southern Mississippi. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Leadership Atlanta and the International Women’s Forum Georgia Chapter.
A proud mom, Shakespeare nerd, exercise enthusiast, and adventure seeker, Stone is passionate about building strong organizations that create lasting impact for the communities they serve.
