Speakers

Drs. Marja Hoek-Smit is the Founder and Emeritus Director of the International Housing Finance Program, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and emeritus Adjunct Professor in the Wharton Real Estate Department. She continues to teach executive education programs in housing finance and housing market analysis and is a director and core teacher in the Housing Finance Course for Sub-Saharan Africa at Cape Town University, South Africa. Marja is also the Founder and Executive Director of the Housing Finance Information Network—HOFINET—a global web portal that consolidates international housing finance information and statistical data for public use. HOFINET has recently joined the European Mortgage Federation/European Covered Bond Counsel and International Secondary Mortgage Market Association. Marja is a frequent advisor to governments and private- and non-profit sector clients in Emerging Market and Developing Economies in the field of housing and housing finance policy and subsidy systems, housing market assessments and institutional development of the housing finance system. She worked and lived in numerous countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, South- and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and on the board of several other NGOs working in the field of affordable housing.