CSG Becomes Majority Women Owned

CSG Advisors is excited to announce its new and expanded leadership structure. These changes ensure that CSG will build on its in-depth service to clients and advance the firm’s national role in the municipal finance industry.

We are very proud that effective January 1st, Nicole Graham (San Francisco) and Tanya Dempsey (New York) — long-standing leaders of the firm and responsible for CSG’s housing authority practice — are co-CEOs. David Jones (Atlanta), will serve as Chief Financial Officer in addition to his work with housing finance agencies.

These changes will free up time for Gene Slater, Founder and longstanding Chairman, to focus even more on innovative strategies and financings, major development project negotiations, and legislative and policy issues that shape affordable housing throughout the country. “With Nicole and Tanya as co-CEOs and our entire broad leadership team, we are strengthening the firm’s long-term future, and further unifying our related practice areas in municipal finance, development and housing,” stated Gene Slater. “Just as our work with clients focuses on enhancing sustainability – on public agency decisions today that enable them to do more in the future — CSG is committed to positive and sustainable growth itself.”

CSG has been growing in each of its practice areas and increased its number of finance professionals by 90% since 2015. These leadership changes will help manage this continued growth and services to our more than 60 public agency clients across the nation. What makes these changes especially far-reaching is the expansion of firm ownership. CSG has long been committed to diversity, teamwork and broad employee ownership. In addition to serving as co-CEOs, Nicole and Tanya will collectively maintain 51%¹ ownership. This will make CSG doubly unique: not only has it completed more housing financings than any other firm, but it will now be the nation’s largest majority women-owned municipal advisory firm in the housing sector according to Thompson and Reuters Securities Data² and information available on the EDGAR database³.

Beyond the role of women within the firm, CSG is 33% minority-owned. Its already broad group of owners will expand to 11 by adding Tiffani Barletta, Will Dreisbach and Patrick Johnson. Besides Nicole and Tanya serving as co-CEO’s and continuing to lead the firm’s national work on public housing redevelopment, additional roles include:

• • David Jones, will serve as Chief Financial Officer and the third member of the firm’s Board of Directors. This step up reflects David’s integral part in the growth and success of CSG over the last 18 years, both in its financial advisory and quantitative services practice for housing finance agencies (HFAs).

• With David as CFO, Tim Rittenhouse (Principal, New York), and former CFO and President, will be able to focus more of his time on clients. In his 20 years with CSG, Tim has developed indenture management strategies that anticipated many subsequent housings finance agency challenges, and conducted key components of many HFA planning and resource allocation studies. Drawing on his many decades in municipal finance, Tim serves as one of CSG’s supervisory Principals for the firm’s role as registered municipal advisor with the SEC and MSRB.
• John Hamilton will continue as Principal and Chief Governance Officer. John has more than 25 years’ experience with the firm, designing housing financings for many large cities and counties.
• Scott Smith, located in the San Francisco office and who has been with CSG for 20 years, will continue to lead the firm’s practice in infrastructure financing, land development and redevelopment.
• Gene Slater will continue as the Founder and Principal, creating strategies and programs for numerous agencies, and will oversee the firm’s central role in designing initiatives with national organizations, Congress and the White House for greater affordability, inclusiveness and resources for state and local housing finance agencies.

We look forward to working successfully together with our many clients and colleagues across the industry in the New Year.

1 CSG has submitted updated ownership changes to the SEC as of 12/28/2022.
2 Thompson Reuters “FINANCIAL ADVISOR RANKINGS 2002−2022 (1st Half) In Tax-Exempt Long-Term Housing New Issues − Top Five Firms, by Number of Issues”.
3 The EDGAR system is a public database that contains the most recent SEC filings for Municipal Advisor firms including information about firm ownership.