Exploring New Models for Affordable Housing
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
September 12, 2011
Thomas A. Bledsoe
Thomas A. Bledsoe is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Housing Partnership Network and its affiliated companies. He became the first full-time president of the Housing Partnership Network in 1998. Under his leadership, the Network has become the leading voice for the high-capacity, partnership-based nonprofits in the affordable housing industry and has launched innovative social enterprises that strengthen the performance and scale of the sector. He is vice chairman of the Charter School Financing Partnership, launched by the Network in 2008 in collaboration with five CDFI member organizations. Mr. Bledsoe is also board chairman of the Gulf Coast Housing Partnership, a New Orleans-based nonprofit development company created by the Network in response to the 2005 hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast region. Mr. Bledsoe and the Network helped spearhead the formation of the National Community Stabilization Trust and he serves as the chair of the board. He also serves as a board director of NCB Capital Impact. Mr. Bledsoe and the Housing Partnership Network have been recognized by Fast Company magazine as one of the leading social capitalists in the country. Previously, he served as President of the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, Deputy Secretary of the cabinet level Executive Office of Communities and Development in Massachusetts, and as the first Director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services in Boston. Mr. Bledsoe graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and received his Masters Degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He lives in Newton, MA with his wife and four daughters.
