Title: Executive Director
Organization: Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation
Location: Boston, MA

Roger Herzog currently serves as the Executive Director for the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation (CEDAC), where he works with community development corporations (CDCs) and other non-profit organizations on affordable and supportive housing development and preservation. Roger also serves as Executive Director of CEDAC’s affiliate, the Children’s Investment Fund, which provides financing and technical assistance to non-profit early education and out of school time providers.

In addition, Roger chairs the state’s Supportive Housing and Services Committee of the Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness. This committee is the successor to the Interagency Supportive Housing Working Group (also chaired by Roger), a Massachusetts initiative to create 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing and improve interagency collaboration over a three year period. Under this initiative, the state actually funded 1,750 supportive housing units.

Roger brings over 30 years of experience in Massachusetts in the housing and community development field, including work in both the public and non-profit sectors. From 1993 until 1999, Roger worked on affordable housing programs for the City of Cambridge’s Community Development Department, including serving as the City’s Housing Director from 1996 until 1999. Prior to joining the City, Roger served from 1987 to 1992 as the Community Development Director of Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, Inc. (IBA), a large Boston-based CDC.

Roger earned his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1980 and Master of City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. His Master’s thesis addressed strategies for rehousing homeless families.

Why are you motivated to participate in the Health Leaders Network? How will your participation enhance your current and future work?

Massachusetts is in the forefront of states in developing cross sector approaches to solving homelessness, and we have lessons both to share and to learn. My organization, CEDAC, is deeply involved in the state’s efforts to develop supportive housing through our work as a technical assistance provider and as underwriter of several bond-funded capital programs. I also chair a key state interagency committee that is working on policies to improve our supportive housing production system. I am hoping to learn about resources in the health care field that are available to supportive housing providers. I also seek to hear about best practices from the network on strategies to address homelessness and increase supportive housing production. Finally I will be eager to learn about the linkages between health care and early childhood education. Our growing understanding of brain development supports the increased investment in early education.