Our team of professionals is committed to providing the resources needed for communities to thrive.

As president and CAO of Nan McKay & Associates, Nan McKay leads a corporation that has specialized in providing organizational development, consulting, and training to both public and private federally subsidized housing sectors since 1980. In this role, Nan oversees and has ultimate responsibility for the operations of the company. Her expertise lies in the improvement of efficiency and quality of individual performance, and her hands-on work with PHAs and HUD gives her extensive insight into the challenges and issues relating to subsidized housing programs. As a former executive director of an award-winning PHA, Nan understands agency challenges and knows how to streamline and improve PHA performance. She has published 22 books, primarily on the subsidized housing industry, and written numerous course books.

As NMA's vice president of finance, Michael Petro brings an extensive background of working with PHAs, including over 150 housing authorities ranging from less than 100 to 40,000 units and with rankings across the board from severely distressed to high performers. He has assisted agencies in 41 states as well as Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority, Puerto Rico Department of Housing, and Virgin Islands Housing Authority.

Michael has personally trained over 3,500 PHA and HUD personnel and delivered over 120 workshops in 23 states. He is proficient in a number of HUD programs, including public housing, housing choice voucher, capital fund grants (CFP), project-based Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation (Mod Rehab) and New Construction, Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), Moving to Work (MTW), Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI), Resident Opportunities and Self-Sufficiency (ROSS), Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the Financial Data Schedule (FDS) and Public Housing Assessment System (PHAS), and various other programs and grants. He has developed and administered numerous training sessions for these programs including RAD, CFP, HCV, and public housing, and helped train HUD personnel on VMS reporting and HUD regulations.

As Vice President of Operations, Sarah Waitt oversees all internal operational functions, including human resources, marketing, event coordination, desktop publishing, and call center services. She also oversees NMA’s remote services division, and NMAI’s inspection administration team. In addition, she leads NMA’s management-level strategy and planning meetings, carrying long-term strategies down to the department level by implementing the use of department scorecards and individual action plans.

Keshawn Cue has all-encompassing experience in providing strong leadership; federal, state, and local regulatory compliance; innovative market leading strategies; government influence; and key stakeholder collaboration in the public sector. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Louisville.

Gwendolyn Fuller is a seasoned Program Manager with more than 30 years of diverse experience in affordable housing and real estate industries; and a solid track record of positive outcomes, including significant increases in efficiency, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, budget performance, and effectiveness. She has extensive experience directing diverse staffs of 150+ employees with a team approach that emphasizes a cohesive work environment. As a results-oriented, adaptable leader, she brings to the table a proactive approach to solving problems, exceptional critical thinking skills, and a unique ability to improve overall effectiveness.

Ms. Samantha Sowards has been a full-time trainer and consultant at NMA since 2008 and currently serves as the Senior Manager of Professional Services. She works with hundreds of housing authorities, management companies, state agencies, and investors each year in the areas of program operations, policy development, training, file reviews/approvals, and compliance. She is a subject matter expert and speaks nationally on a wide array of low-income housing programs, including the housing choice voucher (HCV), public housing, project-based voucher (PBV), HOME, project-based rental assistance (PBRA), and low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) programs as well as the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program and other public housing repositioning programs. Currently, Ms. Sowards is NMA’s senior subject matter expert on regulations and implementation of HOTMA.

Ms. Sowards specializes in compliance for former public housing projects undergoing dispositions and acq/rehab under the LIHTC program.

Nathan Paufve has been working in the affordable housing industry since 2004. He has extensive operational and management experience in the HCV program, including new admissions at a very large PHA, where he was responsible for voucher utilization. He also served as an internal auditor for PBCA operations in multiple states nationwide. Nathan’s experience has included developing OIG responses, overseeing a document management team, and strategic planning related to Mod-Rehab, PBV, and HCV programs in Chicago. Nathan also has worked with nonprofit organizations and provided policy research on affordable housing programs.

Jamila Burleson-Goshon is highly experienced in affordable housing operations, with specific expertise in increasing revenue, reducing vacancy loss, monitoring compliance, and minimizing risk to multimillion-dollar assets. She has broad knowledge of the apartment industry, having served in roles as varied as community manager, compliance manager, compliance specialist, assistant director of property operations, and director of property operations. Jamila has successfully managed large apartment communities, including both multi-site and multi-phase, mixed-use property types, and has effectively recovered jeopardized portfolios at risk of losing financing. She has a deep understanding of Section 8, HUD, HOME, RD, Tax-Exempt Bond Financing, SHP, S+C, CHFA and Section 42 Low Income Housing Tax Credit compliance and is proficient with Yardi, Affordable Yardi, Rent Roll, Onesite, MRI, and MS Office.

NMA trainer and consultant Adam Ensalaco specializes in making rent calculation easier to understand and clearing up common misconceptions about the process. Adam has previous experience in the affordable housing industry working to house people with disabilities and training housing authorities on reasonable accommodations and has been a part of the NMA team for nearly a decade.

NMA trainer and consultant Daryle Ensley is a motivated self-starter with an aptitude for learning new skills quickly and welcoming all challenges. With extensive affordable housing knowledge, including HUD regulations, the HCV program, and quality control, Daryle provides consulting and technical assistance services to agencies large and small nationwide. Daryle has extensive supervisory experience, having directly supervised employees throughout her career to a level of high performance. She has trained hundreds of housing authority staff nationally on HCV and public housing regulations. Her current position requires extensive analyzing, problem-solving, and coordinating skills to ensure NMA clients receive the highest level of service in accordance with HUD regulations.

Cara Gillette provides technical assistance nationwide in the areas of fair housing, public housing management, hearings, economic self-sufficiency, and governing boards. She has taught PHAS and SEMAP at Rutgers University. Prior to joining Nan McKay and Associates, in her 14-year tenure at the San Diego Housing Commission, she administered Section 8 and public housing waiting lists of 40,000 families and managed the public housing program, in addition to serving as the Section 8 hearing officer. Cara wrote and was awarded $7 million in collaborative grants to work with local nonprofits and community agencies delivering programs to help families achieve economic independence. In her earlier career, she founded a community clinic and emergency medical service for underserved families in the rural South.

Anita Keys has spent the last several years of her career in housing programs. She has held several positions—including Acting Director Of HCV, Deputy Director of HCV, Supervisor of HCV, HQS and Special Programs, FSS Coordinator, Acting Resident Program Manager, Occupancy Specialists, and Front Desk Clerk—with Southern Nevada Housing Authority. Anita is very passionate about the rewards and challenges of affordable housing work.

Prior to her career in housing, Anita spent many years supervising benefit programs, like TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid, for the City of Virginia Beach.

Anita was born and raised in Akron, OH, and attended Akron University.

Dorian Jenkins is a dynamic and energetic leader with more than three (3) decades of low-income housing experience. The former vice president of program management for NMA, his team administered approximately 75,000 HCV contracts nationwide, successfully managing their programs while incorporating a customer-focused culture within each agency. Under Dorian's leadership, the program management division positioned NMA to be at the forefront of program management, staff augmentation, and performance management in the affordable housing industry.

With extensive experience in both public housing and the HCV program, Marianne Krager started her career in affordable housing in 1991 as an office assistant and worked her way to an operations director. She joined the NMA team in 2016.

Reneé McTyeire is an accomplished, motivated, and goal-oriented trainer and consultant with a proven track record of managing, training, and consulting, gained through more than two decades of progressive leadership experience in the multifamily housing industry. She left property management in 2004 to work for a performance-based contract administrator (PBCA) for four states, where she conducted management and occupancy reviews (MORs) and processed special claims. In 2007, she took a senior trainer position with the same PBCA, training multifamily housing owners and agents in compliance with the program’s HUD Handbook 4350.3, REV-1, Change 4, and on proper submission of special claims. Since joining NMA in 2016, she has been the multifamily housing subject matter expert, training owners, agents, and PHAs in multifamily housing compliance, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) project-based rental assistance (PBRA) program, and customer service skills in affordable housing. She also provides consulting services nationwide, and recently took the lead role in developing NMA’s Model Tenant Selection Plan, Model EIV Policies and Procedures, and the new Multifamily Housing Rent Calculation seminar.

Morgan is a certified HQS/UPCS inspector of NMAI, having worked with PHAs and affordable housing programs throughout the United States for many years, with over 20,000 completed inspections.

In his role as an NMAI inspector, Morgan has taken the lead as a trainer and mentor to other inspectors over the years and assisted in testing and training multiple mobile inspection solutions.

Morgan joined the NMA training team in 2023 to bring his field experience in both HQS and UPCS together with his knowledge of the new NSPIRE protocol to our industry and is looking forward to the next chapter of ensuring families have safe and habitable housing.

Jeni Rios has worked in the affordable housing industry for over 20 years and has experience with almost every aspect of affordable housing, including property management, policy and procedure development and grant application, to name a few. Jeni also has life experience with affordable housing, having been homeless in the past and having also been a Housing Choice Voucher participant.  In her professional career, Jeni has held many roles at two High Performing PHA's most recently as Director of Rental Services. Additionally Jeni has spent her career advocating for affordable housing programs with local and state government as well as on Capitol Hill.

Teri Robertson has worked for decades with NMA in various managerial positions and as a senior trainer conducting seminars nationally on housing choice voucher and public housing regulations. Not only is she a significant contributor to the development of technical manuals and materials relating to federally subsidized housing, she has also authored countless new publications, seminars, and products for NMA. Teri is nationally recognized as a leading expert in the housing choice voucher and public housing programs.

NMA trainer and consultant Heather Sievers leverages nearly two decades of low-income housing expertise as a subject matter expert in HUD’s multifamily programs, including project-based rental assistance (PBRA), the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC), and the Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system. Throughout her career, she has overseen and monitored properties with a spectrum of funding such as project-based Section 8, LIHTC, HOME, and the USDA Rural Development (RD) program and directed the acquisition and rehabilitation of these properties as well as the certification and relocation of residents.

As compliance manager and quality assurance auditor at the Idaho Housing and Finance Association, Heather was part of the team that successfully bid for five states during the two rebids of the performance-based contract administration (PBCA) packages. She oversaw the ongoing state compliance programs as the state allocation agency for the LIHTC program, the TCA and PBCA for the project-based Section 8 program, and the participating jurisdiction (PJ) for the HOME program. Heather was also the designated trainer for the state of Idaho and created and executed over twenty different training programs during that time. She currently trains several NMA classes, including Fundamentals of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Management, Multifamily Housing Specialist (MHS), and RAD Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) Overview.

Soozie Tucker has over ten years of experience in the housing arena. She started her career in Section 8 and then branched into other areas of affordable housing, including public housing, LIHTC, FSS, fraud, quality control, and compliance. Soozie is also experienced in writing policies, best practices, ACOPs, and administrative plans. She has been a trainer with Nan McKay and Associates since 2015.

With more than four decades of experience in the affordable housing industry, Carrol Vaughan specializes high-quality consulting, training, and products that help housing agencies better serve their communities. Prior to joining NMA, Carrol served as the executive vice president and chief operating officer for the San Diego Housing Commission, where she was responsible for all housing programs, real estate development, workforce and economic development initiatives, housing finance, and homeownership programs, along with operation functions, organizational development and training, and information technology. Some of her accomplishments at SDHC include leading its public housing disposition efforts, implementing the restructure of the organization to better focus on growing its portfolio using private sector financing and development techniques, and developing online measurement tools to tie employee performance to compensation levels. She has also served in leadership roles with housing agencies in North Carolina and Kentucky.

For more than three decades, Patti Zatarian-Menard has designed, implemented, and evaluated social programs dedicated to helping people out of poverty. She is a founding member of the Institute of Collaborative Management and has forged cutting-edge collaborations with housing authorities, community colleges, social service organizations, and the Departments of Health, Human Services, Education and Labor, as well as corporations and foundations. Patti has been a self-sufficiency and public housing management trainer and consultant with Nan McKay and Associates since 1992. She founded the San Diego Housing Commission’s family self-sufficiency program, one the most successful in the nation.

With more than 20 years of experience providing HQS inspection services, Michael Petragallo and his team have successfully completed more than 1.5 million HQS, UPCS, and rehabilitation inspections for dozens of agencies across the nation. He has been certified as an inspector/trainer in both HQS and UPCS, in addition to being REAC-certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

As NMAI's director of inspections, Deb Torvik is responsible for ensuring regulation compliance in regards to HUD and Section 8 housing guidelines. Specializing in HQS, UPCS, and pre-REAC inspections, Deb leverages two decades of experience in the affordable housing industry and is a certified HQS and UPCS inspector.

An HQS and UPCS trainer with more than 20 years of HCV program experience, Derrick has extensive knowledge of HUD regulations, with a specialization in HQS inspections, quality control, and rent reasonableness. He has managed the inspections process for some of the largest PHAs in the country, including over 500,000 HQS and quality control inspections, and spearheaded the first successful program (Owner Excellence Program) in the nation to reward and recognize extraordinary property owners in the HCV program for a Moving to Work (MTW) agency. He is a U.S. veteran (USMC) and a member of Toastmasters International.

As administrator for the inspections department, Misty Nance-Jackson is responsible for providing a high level of detailed support to the NMAI team. With nearly a decade of experience in the housing industry, Misty has efficiently carried out all day-to-day operations on numerous inspection contracts as well as supervised inspectors. She has considerable hands-on knowledge working with all major housing authority software systems, including Yardi, Elite, Tenmast, HAB, and Happy. In addition, Misty is also HQS and UPCS certified.

Morgan is a certified HQS/UPCS inspector of NMAI, having worked with PHAs and affordable housing programs throughout the United States for many years, with over 20,000 completed inspections.

In his role as an NMAI inspector, Morgan has taken the lead as a trainer and mentor to other inspectors over the years and assisted in testing and training multiple mobile inspection solutions.

Morgan joined the NMA training team in 2023 to bring his field experience in both HQS and UPCS together with his knowledge of the new NSPIRE protocol to our industry and is looking forward to the next chapter of ensuring families have safe and habitable housing.

Angela Cao is a Regional Account Manager for Nan McKay & Associates with over 10 years of sales and marketing experience. A strategic thinker with a background in marketing and hospitality, she has a solid record of client engagement and enticement by means of innovative, concise and attractive design. Angela is effective at developing marketing and communication strategies to increase online visibility and customer engagement and remain competitive in the market. Her strengths include market analysis, networking, and naturally building strong relationships with clients and customers.

Kaynisha “KK” Dawson was a brand and marketing strategist for Nan McKay and Associates before she was promoted to Regional Account Manager in 2017. Her background in marketing helped develop her good communication skills, ability to be self-disciplined, industry knowledge and confidence in her transition to a sales role with NMA. Her passion to grow client relationships, build trust, and satisfy her client’s needs are unmatchable. KK takes pride in connecting with the heart-beating people she helps by applying her industry expertise to ensure efficient, prompt, and complete customer service.