Curt Johansen, President

Mr. Johansen is the Managing General Partner of Sustainable Community Partners, LLC an innovative company that envisions, entitles, designs, finances, constructs, and markets sustainable conservation communities. His current work is the culmination of a career spanning 30 years in mixed use development, with the last ten exclusively in pursuit of sustainable communities. His projects seek to locally source food, energy, education, green building, and transit. Mr. Johansen is a recognized leader in the pursuit of development reform; his philosophy adheres to principle-based practices of linking jobs with housing; preserving priority agricultural, habitat, and open spaces; designing institutional systems for reclamation and re-use of renewable resources; creating place-based communities that include culturally diverse, affordable housing; and integrating small neighborhood schools with an eco-literate curriculum.

Mott Smith, Board Chair

Mott Smith is co-founder of Civic Enterprise, an L.A. firm that builds innovative, socially-conscious projects in emerging neighborhoods and provides innovative parking and economic development solutions for cities and communities. He is very active in local, regional and state legislative issues. His built work has been honored by the Urban Land Institute, the L.A. Conservancy, and Architectural Record Magazine. He is a founding board member of the California Infill Builders Federation, teaches in USC’s Master of Real Estate Development Program and Planning Program in the USC Price School of Public Policy. Earlier, he was as Acting Director of Planning for the L.A. Unified School District after serving as founding Executive Director of New Schools-Better Neighborhoods. He also worked as editor/business manager of The Planning Report. Mott is past president the Westside Urban Forum. He received a Master of Real Estate Development from USC and a BA in Linguistics from UCLA.

Andrew Malick, Treasurer

Andrew leads Malick Infill and has over 20 years of experience in the real estate development industry. During his career he has worked in all three legs of the development process; construction, design, and development. Andrew was one of the first to see value in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego where he has designed and developed multiple projects. When not working on his projects, Andrew works passionately to help local and state government adapt housing policy to align with the sustainable development principles. He has participated in multiple stakeholder committees focused on the subject of housing affordability and helped author AB 2372 that aims to provide more moderate-income housing on transit corridors. He also co-authored an amendment to the San Diego Municipal Code that makes it easier for developers to build micro-units in an effort to boost market rate affordable housing.  Andrew is a past member of the Management Committee for ULI San Diego – Tijuana District Council and is a Co-Founder and past chair of the Small-Scale Infill Development Council. He also founded and currently chairs the Transit Oriented Development Council. He has masters degrees in real estate development from Woodbury University and urban design and architecture from Washington University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Engineering from Trinity College.

Meea Kang, Secretary

Ms. Kang is Senior Vice President for Related California, where she is responsible for business development, strategic planning and creative financing mechanisms for Related’s affordable residential developments. She comes to Related with over 20 years experience in affordable housing finance and development and has entitled and constructed more than 2,500 affordable multi-family housing units in California worth over $500 million.  Prior to joining Related, Ms. Kang was President and Co-Founder of Domus Development, LLC, where she led the company’s development activities for fifteen years.  Ms. Kang’s projects have received national accolades from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Institute of Architects, U.S. Green Building Council, and the 2014 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, California’s highest environmental honor.  Ms. Kang serves as a Commissioner on the California Commission on Aging, appointed by Governor Brown in 2016, is a member of Lambda Alpha International and serves as a director on the boards of the California Housing Consortium, Rail~Volution, and the California Museum. She earned a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornell University.

Will Cipes, Director

Will is a Los Angeles native dedicated to enhancing the built environment to create a more livable, sustainable Southern California. He currently leads Southern California Development for Carmel Partners, a vertically integrated multifamily and mixed-use developer focused on urban infill projects in the region’s most job rich and supply constrained neighborhoods. Will’s background includes more than 15 years in urban planning and real estate development, including work with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, New Economics for Women, and Thomas Safran & Associates. Will earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies from Pitzer College and a Master of Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California.

Jonathan Fearn, Director

Jonathan is Head of Development of Oak Impact Funds, a real estate firm specializing in the acquisition, development and management of commercial and residential properties. He recently moved from his position as Managing Director of Greystar, where he oversaw all development activities for Greystar in Northern California – a pipeline of over 5,000 units and $3B in value.  Prior to joining Greystar, Jonathan served as Vice President of Development at SummerHill Housing Group where he was responsible for entitlements for multifamily, single-family and mixed-use projects.  Prior to SummerHill, Jonathan for Em Johnson Interest, a development firm specializing in affordable housing and economic development projects within low-income communities. Jonathan is the Chair of the Oakland Planning Commission, a board member of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, Housing Action Coalition, and a founding member of the Casita Coalition, group created to advocate for small building forms. He was formally a Co-Chair of the AllHome Regional Impact Council (RIC) – a roundtable of stakeholders convened to address housing insecurity and homelessness, and a Technical Committee member of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Committee to House the Bay Area (CASA). Jonathan holds a Masters of City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley and a BA in History from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

David Mogavero, Director

David Mogavero is the Senior Principal of Mogavero Architects. He began his career designing naturally heated and cooled buildings thirty years ago. David’s practice embraces the full range of progressive community design, such as high density mixed-use infill and holistic building systems, including daylighting, natural ventilation, passive heating and cooling, solar shading, water recycling, on-site energy generation and agriculture. David’s roles as developer and environmental advocate help him conceive projects that are economically viable and sensitive to the community and the environment. Through his professional practice, writings and lectures, service as past president and board member of the Environmental Council of Sacramento and the Planning and Conservation League, and current board member of the Council of Infill Builders, David has promoted the widespread adoption of sustainable building and smart growth practices and policies.

Bruce Fairty joined Cypress Equity Investments as Chief Operating Officer with thirty-five years of multifamily real estate development experience and investment background as a principal. Immediately prior to joining CEI, Bruce was active as a developer in the San Francisco Bay Area, first as a partner with the Castle Group Company and then as a partner with Thompson-Dorfman Partners. At Thompson-Dorfman and the Castle Group Bruce oversaw the acquisition, entitlement and development of approximately 4,400 units in San Francisco and the Bay Area. At Castle he led the company’s efforts in the use of modular construction processes for multifamily projects. Prior to moving to San Francisco Bruce was a developer in Florida and founded Heritage Development Company in 1996 in partnership with Chicago’s Pritzker family where he oversaw all aspects of the development process for over 5,600 units. Between 1990-1995, he acquired over 6,000 REO and distressed debt units as Co-founder of Bailey Capital Company in partnership with the Whitehall Fund and Apollo Real Estate Advisors. Previously, Bruce was CFO of Trammell Crow Residential’s Central Florida Division and later Area Partner, responsible for overseeing the development of 8,500 multifamily units across four regional divisions. Mr. Fairty received his undergraduate degree from Drew University and MBA from Rutgers University.