Tina Brooks

undersecretary, Housing and Community Dev.

Tina Brooks serves as the Commonwealth's housing policy chief within the Deval Patrick Administration's Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. With more than 18 years of experience in affordable housing finance and development, Brooks is a key architect in expanding affordable housing opportunities in Massachusetts. A Jamaica Plain resident, Brooks most recently served as the director of the Boston office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a program that provides loans, grants and technical assistance to spur the development of affordable housing, new businesses, recreational facilities, schools, safety programs and other neighborhood institutions. Brooks began her career as a landscape architect with the Pittsburgh firm Environmental Planning and Design, developing site and land plans for various community planning projects. She earned her master's degree in real estate development in 1989 at MIT's Center for Real Estate. Following graduate school, Brooks worked as a development consultant with Greater Boston Community Development, now known as The Community Builders. She moved with TCB to Philadelphia and assisted community-based nonprofit developers in financing and completing affordable housing developments. In 1994 Brooks became the program director for LISC's Philadelphia program, successfully introducing a series of housing and other neighborhood revitalization initiatives relying on effective collaboration with local government and the corporate community on behalf of neighborhood interests.