Community Builders of Kansas City names new CFO

Steve Weatherford has joined not-for-profit community development corporation Community Builders of Kansas City as chief financial officer. Elizabeth Schultz has also joined the Kansas City, Missouri-based organization as director of strategic initiatives and community development.

Weatherford brings more than 40 years of housing policy and affordable housing finance experience to the position and replaces Robert Pearson, who is retiring.

Weatherford was most recently senior lending officer at Kansas City-based Local Initiative Support Corporation where he oversaw all capital investments in support of real estate projects in low- to moderate-income areas throughout Kansas City. Additionally, he oversaw the marketing of LISC’s affiliate products and services, including New Market Tax Credits and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and led the development of LISC’s overall strategies to increase the impact of local community development investment through policy changes at the local and state level.

Prior to LISC, Weatherford spent most of his career in housing finance policy and affordable housing. He started his career in the mortgage industry and housing development. He completed his law degree while serving as the executive director of the Oklahoma Housing Finance Authority. He was appointed by President Clinton to the position of regional administrator of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and then moved to Kansas City to work in the private sector in public finance as an investment banker for George K. Baum & Co.

Weatherford left investment banking to join Gov. Kathleen Sibelius’s administration as president of the Kansas Development Finance Authority and the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation. Weatherford served in the Obama administration for three years as senior advisor in the office of chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Labor.

Previously, Schultz was senior associate at DRAW Architecture and Urban Design in Kansas City where she led feasibility studies for neighborhood redevelopment initiatives and served as project manager for three multi-family projects. Before that she held architect and urban planner positions at Miller Hull Partnership in Seattle, Washington, and ZGF Architects in Washington, D.C. and Seattle.

Active in the community, Schultz is particularly engaged in the Swope Parkway/Blue Parkway, Brush Creek Corridor and Kansas City Design Center’s Neighborhood Prospects Advisory committees.