Fundamentals of Municipal Finance Credential

Justin Marlowe is a Research Professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where he also serves as Director of the Center for Municipal Finance. His research and teaching are focused on public finance, with emphasis on public capital markets, infrastructure finance, state and local budgeting, and financial disclosure. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Municipal Finance Journal, and he co-hosts the Public Money Pod, a podcast produced by the Center for Municipal Finance.

Christopher R. Berry is the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and the College and director the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, at the University of Chicago. Berry is the author of Imperfect Union: Representation and Taxation in Multilevel Governments (Cambridge UP, 2010), winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association, and many other scholarly publications.

Paula R. Worthington is a Senior Lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she also serves as academic director of the School’s Policy Labs program and faculty lead on its MPP program. At Harris, Worthington teaches courses in state and local government and cost-benefit analysis and advises students completing applied projects for public and nonprofit sector clients. 

John Anderson is an academic economist and an adviser to public policy makers in the fields of public finance, fiscal reform, and tax policy. Dr. Anderson has served as a Senior Economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, DC.

Lourdes Germán, J.D., led investment banking efforts in the Northeast and New York Tri-State region as Vice President of Municipal Finance at Fidelity Investments. She then served as Vice President and General Counsel at Breckinridge Capital Advisors, founded a small financial services start-up, and then served as a Director at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy where she helped launch and lead a global program of work on municipal fiscal health, which included activities in partnership with the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, and engagement with members of congress via the first Congressional Briefing focused on the fiscal health of cities. 

Minjee Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning department at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research is situated at the intersection of real estate development and urban planning. She writes about land use regulation, large-scale real estate developments, exactions, negotiated developments, and urban public finance. Her goal as a planning scholar is to identify the ways in which planners and policymakers can foster equitable real estate developments.

Laura Brunner is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority (The Port), an economic development agency based in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more than a decade, Laura has led The Port with her impassioned efforts to fix broken real estate in order to reduce wealth disparities, increase homeownership and grow manufacturing jobs. 

Amy is Champlain Housing Trust's Chief Operating Officer and has worked at there since 1994. She previously led development projects from inception through permitting, funding and construction often in partnership with our co-developers, Evernorth (formerly Housing Vermont). Amy is responsible for all operations, overseeing the Property Management, Real Estate Development, Homeownership and Lending, and Cooperative Housing departments. Amy started at BCLT on North Street single-handedly serving our homeownership customers and remains a resource to the Homeownership staff. Amy is a non-profit representative on the Evernorth Board.

Semida Munteanu is an associate director at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, doing programmatic work on land markets, valuation, and property taxation. She has extensive experience developing and managing educational programs that bring together academics, policymakers, and public officials. Her research interests include the relationship between property taxation and school finance, and the effects of land use regulation and property tax policy on housing markets.