Wendell Johns serves as Chair of Cinnaire’s Board of Directors.
From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Johns served as Executive Vice President and CFO of the NHP Foundation, a nonprofit owner and operator of affordable rental housing in (then) 11 states. During a leadership transition and headquarters relocation, he was asked to serve as acting COO/CEO. He had retired in 2005 as Vice President for Multifamily Housing at Fannie Mae, where he helped direct its development of an industry-leading portfolio of community development and affordable rental assets. There, he played a critical role in creating tools for the industry including: structuring the first single investor equity fund, capitalizing some of the premier state and local equity funds and designing the “recapture exclusion” which was proposed to Congress to advance affordable rental housing preservation. He also pioneered housing finance models that later became Fannie Mae’s American Communities Fund.
Earlier, Mr. Johns was Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for a number of divisions of Oxford Development Corporation in Indianapolis, Indiana and later in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to that, he was an audit supervisor with Coopers & Lybrand (CPAs) in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Mr. Johns serves on the boards of Cinnaire (formerly Great Lakes Capital Fund) as Chair, and of Howard University (Public Charter) Middle School for Mathematics and Science as Chair.
Mr. Johns has previously served on the boards of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield – Vice Chair (Baltimore, MD and DC); the Graduate Theological Union – Treasurer (Berkeley, CA); the American Red Cross of the National Capital Region – Chair; Girls Inc of the Washington DC Metropolitan Area – Treasurer; and, the American Lung Association of the District of Columbia.
Mr. Johns holds a BS from Indiana University and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. He is married to the Honorable Marie C. Johns and lives in Washington, D.C.
