Doris Koo's business card says she's president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners. But at heart, she's something quite different. She's a grassroots community organizer—maybe even the ideal social activist.

“She a remarkable woman,” says Jim Kelly, executive director of Providence Community Housing, a developer that builds affordable housing in New Orleans. “She’s a community organizer at heart and a developer by training.”

Like another well-known community organizer-turned-leader, Koo’s creed was established in Chicago. She got her feet wet in the Windy City in the mid-1970s—10 years before President Barack Obama came on the scene. She started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) courses in Chicago’s garment district and soon became a pillar of the community. When immigrant workers needed someone to explain to local school officials that their kids needed time off for a doctor’s appointment, Koo was there to help them. Later on, after moving to New York, she watched as immigrants were illegally evicted from their apartments or forced to live in wretched conditions in Chinatown and decided to step in. It was Koo who organized a team of Brooklyn law students to take those landlords to court.

So, how does it happen that 25 years later, someone who was fighting the good fight on a fundamental level finds herself leading one of the biggest tax-credit syndicators in the country? Like many leaders of her generation, the slight, yet forceful, enthusiastic Koo has brought her ideas into the boardroom—and she is promising to step out of the shadow of Enterprise’s past leaders to create a new legacy for the firm. But with a financial crisis that’s hammering many of Enterprise’s biggest financial backers, she faces a climate that would make even the most steadfast community activist squeamish.

Columbia, Meet New York

If you didn’t know what Jim Rouse looked like before you drove into Columbia, Md., you’d know his face by the time you left. Walk toward the man-made lake by the Enterprise offices, and you’ll find a statute of Rouse. Inside the Enterprise offices, you’ll see pictures of Rouse and medals with his likeness. It’s easy to understand why—Rouse and his wife Patty helped build Columbia, and he launched Enterprise to assist local nonprofits interested in building affordable housing. Housing was Jim Rouse’s passion.

For Koo, a similar passion took longer to develop. In 1979, while she was teaching ESL classes in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York, fair housing issues were serendipitously working their way into her life. “The set of issues I was dealing with weren’t education- or job-related,” says Koo, who led Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a New York-based affordable housing and social services provider. “It was housing. It was, ‘How do I get heat and hot water provided by the landlord?’”

After repeatedly taking landlords to court and hearing time and again that they weren’t getting enough in rent to make necessary capital improvements to the dilapidated housing of her clients, Koo decided to take matters into her own hands. “After seeing buildings burn because people had to use electrical heaters, we decided this is enough,” Koo says. “We can either keep organizing rent strikes and hauling landlords to court, or we can build housing.”

So in 1985, Koo took a trip to Columbia, seeking out the funds needed to build affordable housing in New York from none other than Enterprise—then a smaller organization leading a national effort to create the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). [Editor’s note: LIHTC was signed into law with the passage of the 1986 Tax Reform Act.] Rouse, the larger-than-life real estate chieftain from Easton, Md., met personally with Koo, the petite activist from Hong Kong. Little did he know that 22 years later she would be leading the organization he founded. “I thought of Jim as one of us when I first met him,” Koo says. “He was a social entrepreneur in his thinking. Being a person of deep religious faith, he cared deeply about the community.”

Still, without capital or development expertise, Koo offered little incentive on the surface to persuade a nationally renowned developer to partner up with her. But she made a mark on Rouse with her passion, observers say.

“She was nothing short of exceptional,” says Bart Harvey, Koo’s predecessor as CEO of Enterprise and deputy chairman under Rouse at the time of Koo’s first visit. “She didn’t know housing well at that point, but she knew what she wanted to get done. So, we taught her housing.”

Enterprise helped Koo put together the first LIHTC deal in New York. But even with that assistance, a fire almost destroyed her dreams of building 59 units of affordable housing at a tenement building in Chinatown. “The city said we had to demolish the building, but she wouldn’t give up,” says Chris Kui, Koo’s associate director at AAFE and the current CEO. “She went to the city, the HPD [Office of Housing Preservation and Development], the different commissioners, and really begged them, saying, ‘You can’t tear this thing down.’”

They didn’t. AAFE finished the project, called Equality Houses, launching the organization’s foray into development and enhancing Koo’s skills at negotiating tough real estate deals. Eventually, AAFE became the largest nonprofit affordable developer in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, producing around 250 units (mainly through rehab) of affordable housing between 1987 and 1992.

Go West

Family matters called Koo to Seattle in 1992. Koo, who had arrived in the United States at 18 to attend the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for a sociology degree (she later earned a master’s degree in social service administration from the University of Chicago), wanted her children to know their grandparents, who had immigrated to Vancouver. “When she had to move to Seattle, everybody really missed her,” Kui says. “She left a legacy.”

But she was about to start a new legacy on the West Coast. Koo found a job at Fremont Public Association, where she helped turn the old Wintonia Hotel in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area into 982 units of affordable housing for individuals with alcohol, substance abuse, and mental health problems. This wasn’t an easy task. The parents of children at a nearby private school were wary of the new neighbors. But Koo pulled those parents into the development process—eventually, she says, they became the project’s biggest supporters.

After noticing how Koo doggedly overcame fierce community opposition and succeeded, the Seattle Housing Authority came knocking. The agency had received grants for four Hope VI redevelopments and wanted Koo to convince the public housing residents, traditionally distrustful and antagonistic toward the housing authority, to buy into the development. She did this by giving them options—letting them decide whether they wanted to come back to the new development, what features they wanted in the projects, and what services they desired.

“Doris was the shepherd of getting those [built], setting that vision, and moving forward,” says Norman Rice, Seattle’s former mayor and current chairman of Enterprise Community Partners.

Koo’s friends at Enterprise were watching. In 2001, nearly 10 years after Koo moved to Seattle, Harvey convinced her to become Enterprise’s Western regional vice president. She was charged with connecting Enterprise to local housing authorities and other mission-driven developers—something that hadn’t always happened in the past.

In 2005, events beyond Koo’s control overtook the plans for her region. Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore in New Orleans leaving millions homeless and seeking shelter in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas—three cities under Koo’s jurisdiction. Instead of hastily producing housing in those cities, Koo felt strongly that Enterprise had to lead the rebuilding effort in the Gulf Coast. “I told Bart Harvey that even though we had no presence in New Orleans, this crisis had peeled off a scar for the entire country to see—the extreme inequality between rich and poor and the lack of a decent housing structure,” Koo says. “Enterprise does not deserve to be a leader in the affordable housing field if it does not propose a solution to rebuild.”

Koo’s pitch to Harvey worked. Enterprise’s Gulf Coast Rebuilding Initiative will commit $200 million to help create more than 10,000 healthy, sustainable homes. As of December 2008, Enterprise had provided $3 million in grants, invested more than $12 million in loans, and offered nearly $80 million in equity to support the recovery and rebuilding work of its Gulf Coast partners.

Leadership role

As Koo was making her mark in Enterprise’s Western region, Harvey, the longtime CEO who had taken the reins from Rouse, was preparing to step down. At the time of his 2007 retirement, Enterprise was considered a formidable force in affordable housing.

Enterprise’s for-profit subsidiary, Enterprise Community Investment, led by outgoing president and CEO Jeffrey H. Donahue, has three main lines of business: syndicating LIHTCs and New Market tax credits; providing acquisition and pre-development loans; and managing 105,386 properties. In 2008, the company ranked No. 4 on Affordable Housing Finance’s Top 10 Multifamily Tax Syndicators list, with $576 million raised.

In many cases, Enterprise is able to find investors for buildings that house the forgotten—and often unwanted—members of society such as recovering addicts and the homeless. “As an investor, they’ve been out there on the leading edge of helping support projects that actually make sense but are not customarily looked upon as good investments,” says Mike Alvidrez, executive director of Skid Row Housing Trust, a Los Angeles-based group that develops permanent supportive housing.

Meanwhile, the company’s nonprofit side, known as Enterprise Community Partners, focuses on public policy, grants, development and consulting, and sharing best practices in putting together affordable deals. “They are innovators and knowledge disseminators,” says Don Falk, executive director of Tenderloin Neighborhood Development, an affordable developer in San Francisco that has worked with Enterprise on seven projects. “How will I know what’s happening across the country—what innovations are taking place and what’s happening in the field—without them?”

Both Enterprise arms work together to leverage public and private resources. In addition to the Gulf Coast program, Enterprise launched the Green Communities initiative in 2004, which has since provided $570 million in equity, loans, and grants to more than 300 green affordable housing developments that will preserve and create more than 12,500 green affordable homes all designed to meet its internally created Green Communities Criteria (the only national standard offered specifically for affordable housing).

Not surprisingly, the opportunity to lead an organization with such a breadth of activity and clear mission drew what Harvey describes as “big names.” Koo prevailed because of her passion for affordable housing, devotion to Enterprise, and the board’s ultimate confidence in her ability to get things done. “We had a sensational list of people,” Harvey says. “[But] at the end of the day, the board felt that she was hands down the best candidate, in spite of bigger titles and bigger personalities. She had her finger on what needed to be done.”

New Direction

Koo was poised to inherit a strong organization. But founder Rouse’s influence was still sharply felt, and Koo wanted to blaze a new path. “We’ve had two CEOs in the past 25 years,” Koo says. “We don’t have that charismatic founder’s legacy anymore. Do I just continue Enterprise in its path? Or can I reflect on best practices and look forward to the next 25 years to anticipate some of the challenges as I craft solutions?”

She has decided to look forward. And Koo’s experience on the West Coast gave her a starting point. Under Enterprise’s old organizational structure, big decisions were made at headquarters in Columbia. That often meant that its satellite employees in places such as San Francisco and Los Angeles had to get their questions answered by 2:00 p.m. PST if they wanted to start a project that day.

The easiest way to fix that was to empower the staff in the field and, in some cases, move the decision makers out of the confines of the Columbia office space. While Enterprise is still deciding what is the right percentage of its staff to dedicate to this endeavor, there has been a 53 percent increase in the number of employees in the field since Koo became CEO on Jan. 1, 2007.

By not having to rely on headquarters for guidance, Koo insists, Enterprise’s satellite offices will be market experts, offering decisive answers and approvals. On the Gulf Coast, they’re the experts on hurricane recovery. In the Midwest, they understand foreclosure prevention. “The decentralization of the company will bring more of a local flavor,” says Charles R. Werhane, current vice chairman and COO and incoming president and CEO of Enterprise Community Investment.

Koo’s bigger challenge, however, may be her desire to centralize the functions of both the nonprofit and for-profit arms. Instead of having one representative from Enterprise’s nonprofit group work with a client on grants and government programs and another from the for-profit side syndicate or handle tax credits, one individual will handle both sides of the transaction. She believes this change will make life easier for Enterprise’s partners. With one point of contact that is plugged into both the government programs and tax credit investors, they get access to a full range of funding options instead of having to go to different sources within Enterprise. “If we are running into barriers, we will bring government partners in to mitigate those risks as opposed to saying, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t do your deals,’” Koo says.

Such an approach has worked for Enterprise in limited circumstances in New York and California. “We’re taking the best models of how Enterprise has worked with our partners and replicating that across the country,” says Rafael E. Cestero, vice president and Eastern region executive for Enterprise Community Partners.

While such efficiencies could benefit Enterprise in the troubled economy, Harvey says he originally “punted” on the idea. Koo’s persuasive sales skills kicked into action, and she eventually sold him on it. Koo admits this integration will be a challenge, but she also recognizes that these changes are necessary. “Anytime you introduce a new culture, you meet with resistance,” she says.

Doom and Gloom

Koo’s clearly defined road map seemed poised to usher in change when she took the helm of Enterprise. Then the financial world fell apart. Now, there’s a long road ahead.

“There are huge challenges,” says Rick Lazio, a former Congressman from New York, current board member at Enterprise, and a managing director at JP Morgan Chase. “You have basic integration and reorganization issues, and it’s in the middle of an environment where funders are under lots of stress.”

Despite this, the firm’s LIHTC syndication rose from $576 million in 2007 to $742 million in 2008 (plus $100 million in New Markets tax credits and $27 million in multifamily mortgage). Unfortunately, the future looks rocky as many of its major tax credit buyers and funding sources, including Citi Group and Washington Mutual, get swallowed up or disappear altogether. Consider that during Koo’s first year as CEO, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which bought about 40 percent of tax credits, announced they were pulling back their commitment. “When you see someone is writing off $5 million or $10 million or laying off 10,000 or 20,000 people, is this a place whose appetite for tax credits is what it used to be?” Donahue says. “The answer is no.”

Koo, however, says she’s ready to brave the rough economy. In fact, she thinks one silver lining is that the crisis will underscore the importance of housing. “In every crisis, there’s an opportunity scenario,” she says. “The lessons from Katrina and the lessons of subprime both elevated the nation’s awareness of the necessity of housing. Whether it’s a hurricane or a financial tsunami, when you start decimating homes and the stability that homes provide in the community, it causes disruption in people’s lives and to their sense of control.”

To that end, Enterprise is working to bring in new investors that have survived economic demise. In some respects, it’s been successful at finding regional banks and corporations to support its efforts. In Baltimore, it found a hospital—Enterprise recruited Unity Properties and Bon Secours Baltimore Health System to codevelop New Shiloh Village Senior Living alongside Enterprise Homes, the firm’s building operation, which has completed 4,293 units. Enterprise Community Investment provided $9.7 million in tax credit equity on the project and other financing was provided by state and city loans and grants. When the project opened in 2007, it was the first Green Communities building in Baltimore.

Today, Enterprise continues to seek new partners on the equity and lending side, but also on the grant side. There’s still a gap in new and existing projects. Koo wants the government to bridge that hole and provide money for green initiatives, foreclosure prevention, and affordable housing creation. [See “Reignite the Movement,” at right.] “The policy focus is very strategic for us,” Koo says.

In addition, the firm is re-energizing its focus on local initiatives. By early spring 2009, in New York, Enterprise plans to reach its goal of investing $1 billion into the city to create and preserve 15,000 affordable homes for 45,000 low-income New Yorkers, in a program called The Billion Dollar Promise. In Los Angeles, the firm has partnered with the city to create the New Generation Fund, a $100 million predevelopment and acquisition fund designed to preserve and build approximately 4,000 units of affordable housing a year until 2014. Getting funding to sustain all of these programs is a tall order. But Koo is determined to have Enterprise play a number of roles in the recovery, whether distributing funds to local groups, helping with best practices, or linking people who need funds with those who have them.

That vision is just one of the many reasons Koo seems to be the right person to lead Enterprise through this tenuous period. Combine her rare ability to communicate with people from all walks of life—whether wealthy Wall Streeters, D.C.’s power brokers, newly arrived immigrants, or lifelong public housing residents—with her ability to build compromise and generate new ideas, and it’s easy to see why this may just be the right time and place for a community organizer from Chicago to change housing policy in the country. No, not the community organizer in the White House, but an Asian-American immigrant with a warm, yet powerful presence.

“[Doris] is very much into the policy [side],” former Congressman Lazio says. “She’s testified on the Hill. I think her background and personal story and passion are remarkably convincing.”

Leadership Lessons

> Age: 58 > Favorite Quote: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists; and when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.” —Lao Tzu (600 B.C.)

> Best Business Decision: Bringing Enterprise in to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina

> Person You Most Admire: James Rouse

> Best Advice Ever Received: When you find yourself in a position to lead, lead.

> Leadership Philosophy: Focus on the big picture, build a unified vision, and empower others to become leaders and implementers.

> Favorite Music: Classical, mostly Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven

> Last Book Read: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (Crown Publishers, 2006)

The Company: Enterprise Community Partners

• Year Founded: 1982 • Headquarters: Columbia, Md.

• No. of Employees: 467

• 2007 Revenue: $140.5 million

• 2008 Units Managed: 105,386

• 2008 Units Built: 4,985 (all LIHTC deals)

• Geographic Coverage: National

Reignite the Movement

Doris Koo wants to bridge industries to achieve social change.

Doris Koo knows she’s part of a bigger movement, one that started in the ’60s and ’70s advocating community mobilization and social change. Now, it’s found its way to the upper echelons of society, business, even the White House.

Koo says the leaders of this movement have a number of transformative qualities, including an ability to identify the vision of a constituency, find the best path to get a result for that vision, and stay optimistic no matter what the circumstances. Many leaders in that movement have taken those qualities into other industries, such as health care and affordable housing, she says. But the real question, she says, is “how do we bring the movement back together again, not in the old way, but in a very professional way?”

Koo is trying to take the lead by integrating Enterprise and its agenda for social change with organizations in other industries. That’s how it aligned with environmental groups for its Green Communities initiative. One new target: the AARP.

“In addition to the inevitable trend of global warming, we have the inevitable trend of the aging of this nation’s people,” Koo says. “How do we help low-income elderly to age in places that are respectful and dignified? That mission was one I wanted to help propagate.”

Top Draw

Here are the enterprise's top three legislative priorities under Doris Koo's direction

As the Obama administration takes over, Enterprise is confident that its vast legislative agenda will gain traction with the new administration and Congress. Here’s a sampling of the programs the organization wants to advocate in the policy arena.

1) LIHTC. Enterprise wants $5 billion in HOME funds to fill the gaps for the decrease in tax credit values. In addition, the organization seeks refundable LIHTCs to ensure that investors can claim credits; modification of rules that will encourage more bank investment; the ability for investors in multi-state funds to get credits; and an extension of carrybacks from one year to five years.

2) Foreclosures. Doris Koo believes the country will need an additional $5 billion in neighborhood stabilization funds in order to increase the impact of the $3.9 billion that Congress has already allocated. If you include the $1 billion in the National Stabilization Trust, that would leverage a whopping $7.5 billion of private capital to rehab more than 100,000 homes and produce 100,000 new jobs.

3) Green. Enterprise wants to put $8 billion of flex funding towards energy retrofits and other types of energy-efficient measures at affordable housing developments. The firm also advocates for creating an energy-efficient tax credit for multifamily rental units. In addition, Enterprise supports reauthorizing a green HOPE VI program that would ultimately require all public housing revitalization projects assisted under the HOPE VI program to meet Enterprise’s Green Communities standard.