NLIHC will posthumously honor Shauna Sorrells, former NLIHC board member and chief operating officer at the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, with the Edward W. Brooke Housing Leadership Award. Shauna died tragically on September 28, 2019. Shauna will be recognized at the 38th Annual Housing Leadership Awards Reception on Thursday, March 26, 2020 at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, DC.
Shauna Sorrells
Shauna Sorrells committed her professional life to public and affordable housing, striving to improve the lives of low-income people, particularly children. In 2002, she began working at HUD and quickly rose in the agency to the position of director of the Office of Public Housing Programs. Shauna received several HUD Departmental recognitions, including four Secretarial Awards from Secretaries Jackson, Preston and Donovan, as well as an Assistant Secretary's Distinguished Service Award for exceptional efforts. Most recently Shauna served as the chief operating officer for the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, where she continued to work to address homelessness and housing poverty in Maryland. She was an executive committee member of the NLIHC board of directors, and she also served on the board, of NAHRO and Homes for America.
“Shauna was extraordinary, a brilliant, bright light,” wrote NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel about her friend and colleague. “She was a remarkably active and effective housing advocate and practitioner. She brought to all of her work her wisdom, her expertise, her lived experience growing up in subsidized housing, and her deep commitment to the mission and the work of housing the lowest-income people.”
The other 2020 Housing Leadership Awards honorees will be Jennifer Leimaile Ho, commissioner of Minnesota Housing and former senior advisor at HUD and deputy director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), who will be honored with the 2020 Sheila Crowley Housing Justice Award; and Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO) and former NLIHC board chair, who will be presented the 2020 Cushing Dolbeare Lifetime Service Award, named for NLIHC’s founder and early leader of the modern affordable homes movement.
Recognize these outstanding individuals by making a donation to NLIHC in their honor!
Donate as an individual at: https://bit.ly/34ng1FP
Donate as an organization at: https://bit.ly/2WyFnOb
Your donation will be recognized in the Leadership Awards Reception program. The contribution will support NLIHC’s mission to achieve socially just public policy to ensure the lowest-income people have decent, affordable homes.
The 2020 Leadership Awards Reception will be held on the second evening of NLIHC’s 2020 Housing Policy Forum: Ending Homelessness & Housing Poverty taking place March 25-27, 2020. Register for the Forum at: https://bit.ly/2PutSGn and/or Leadership Awards Reception at: https://bit.ly/362lyDf