Principal

Robin Snyderman

Robin Snyderman has been providing leadership in the housing and community development arena for 25 years. Currently a Non Resident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution, Robin is also a Founder and Principal with the new "collaborative management" and consulting firm, BRicK Partners, LLC.

With BRicK Partners, Robin and her colleagues have supported a number of catalytic initiatives including the Illinois Attorney General’s funding for revitalization, housing counseling and technical assistance through the National Foreclosure Settlement awards to a variety of place-based teams and agencies. Another exciting assignment for Robin has been the transition of the Regional Housing Initiative from a successful pilot with nine public housing authorities and the Metropolitan Planning Council to a precious tool that the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning is deploying with these same partners to support priority regional development opportunities. Through BRicK, Robin has further supported local and national leaders to align public and private sector priorities and resources through employer engagement in Buffalo and Milwaukee, and strategic planning implementation efforts with Cook County, the City of Aurora, the North West Suburban Housing Collaborative and other entities.

A native of the Chicago area, Robin served as Vice President of Community Development for the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) from 2006 through 2012, after initially joining as housing director in 1998. While at MPC, Robin managed the launch and growth of several nationally recognized efforts, promoting regional collaborations and securing resources for trailblazing initiatives in the areas of interjurisdictional municipal coordination, employer-assisted housing, public housing reform and local, state and federal policy innovation.

In 2002, Robin staffed the Gubernatorial Housing Transition Team Committee and served on the Executive Committee of the Governor's Housing Task Force from its inception in 2003 through 2012. In 2011, she also co-chaired the State's Linkage Working Group to further outline the State's role promoting subregional and interagency coordination.

Prior to her work at MPC, Robin worked for 10 years with San Francisco's Mission Housing Development Corporation, where she shaped its supportive housing strategy, transforming four troubled Single Room Occupancy Hotels into vibrant housing communities with effective service strategies and active tenant leadership among the 240+ formerly homeless residents.  During that period, in addition to receiving recognition for her work from the Fannie Mae Maxwell Award of Excellence, the New School of Social Research and others, Robin also wrote a monthly newspaper column for the neighborhood paper, served on the Board for Bernal Heights Housing Corporation and provided leadership to a variety of catalytic task forces on supportive housing, code enforcement and neighborhood empowerment.

Robin is a board member of the Illinois Housing Council, Heartland Housing, and The South Suburban Land Bank and Development Authority. She is a Fellow of Leadership Greater Chicago, a graduate of Harvard University's Executive Education Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government, which is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and completed terms of service for the City of Evanston's Housing Commission, for the affordable housing committee of the Federal Home Loan Bank, and as faculty at Northwestern University's Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration Program.