July 19, 2024
Women of Influence 2024, Pt.2
It was another year of excellent and highly competitive candidates.
By Erika Morphy | July 19, 2024 at 04:15 PM
It is time for our annual selection of Women of Influence in commercial real estate and like every year before this, we were astounded at the depth and range of talent that exists in our field. Women still are a minority in CRE but their accomplishments are out sized. As always, we had an extremely difficult time selecting nominees for this year’s class, given the high caliber of candidates. We hope you agree with our choices, whom you can read about below.
The following covers Women of Influence categories from Corporate Real Estate Executive to Humanitarian.
Deborah La Franchi
Deborah La Franchi founded institutional fund manager and
private lender SDS Capital Group in 2001 focused on
providing both debt and equity for affordable housing
developers and battling poverty. Leading the firm as CEO, she
has built SDS to a firm with more than $1.9 billion in assets
under management. Each impact fund on SDS’s platform
serves a different geographic location and employs a unique
investment strategy, but all have the same goal of generating
positive impacts for low-income communities and people.
La Franchi leads the structuring of each fund’s investment strategy, spearheads fundraising, oversees the senior managers of each fund and division, and participates on each fund’s investment committee. One example of the impact that La Franchi and SDS are having is the $190 million SDS Supportive Housing Fund that is aiming to provide more than 2,000 permanent supportive housing (PSH) units for unhoused Californians. The fund currently has more than 800 PSH units in construction as well as four projects in the fund’s immediate pipeline slated to provide additional housing for homeless residents in 2024, primarily in Southern California.
