Moderator

K. Scott Kohanowski

General Counsel

The Center for NYC Neighborhoods

K. Scott Kohanowski, the General Counsel at the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, has directed the Homeowner Stability and LGBT Advocacy Projects at the City Bar Justice Center for the past thirteen years. In that role, Scott has trained attorneys, supervised cases placed with pro bono and staff attorneys, provided direct legal representation to distressed homeowners, and engaged in law reform to preserve housing and communities. His areas of expertise include foreclosure defense, heirs property and community stabilization, and deed theft and scam prevention and litigation with an acute focus on racial equity and social justice across all communities. He is a 1996 graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in Portuguese and Spanish, summa cum laude, and a 2001 graduate of NYU School of Law. Scott worked at Morrison and Foerster LLP in real estate finance prior to transitioning to the public interest realm. Scott serves on the New York City Bar Association’s Mortgage Foreclosure Task Force and Condo/Coop Committee, the New York City Deed Theft Task Force and the New York City Non-Profit Legal Services Foreclosure Prevention Task, and formerly served on the City Bar’s Housing and Urban Development and LGBT Rights Committees. He is co-chair of the ABA subcommittee on Heirs Property, a member of the New York State Bar Association and the National Consumer Law Center, and is a former executive board member of the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York.

Panelist

Matthew Murphy

Executive Director

NYU Furman Center

Matthew Murphy is the Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center. He previously served as Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Policy and Strategy at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), where he oversaw housing policy and strategic operations. Before joining HPD, he worked at the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) as a Senior Project Manager and Policy Advisor. Matt began his urban planning career as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Furman Center while completing a Master of Urban Planning at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. He also holds an undergraduate degree from DePaul University. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young children.

Panelist

Michael Corcoran

Deputy Director of the Homeowner and Consumer Rights Project

Queens Legal Services

Michael is the Director of the Homeownership and Consumer Rights Project at Queens Legal Services, where he leads efforts to protect low- and moderate-income homeowners from foreclosure and to preserve intergenerational wealth, and homeownership, through estate planning.

Michael began practicing foreclosure defense in 2014 at Grow Brooklyn, where he developed programs to help homeowners create estate plans and navigate the challenges of estate administration. Before joining QLS, Michael worked in the Neighborhood Stabilization Project at Bronx Legal Services. Michael’s work is driven by the belief that the benefits of avoiding foreclosure are short-lived without succession planning, and he continues to design holistic programming that promotes the preservation of intergenerational wealth and long-term homeownership stability.

Michael grew up in Park Slope and now lives in the Rockaways. He holds a BA in Film Studies from Yale University, and a J.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law.

Panelist

Angella Davidson

Director of Operations

NHS Brooklyn

Angella Davidson hails from Jamaica, West Indies. She is the Director of Operations at Neighborhood Housing Services of Brooklyn CDC, Inc. (NHS Brooklyn), a nonprofit housing counseling agency, where she oversees the Canarsie office. In addition to being a HUD-certified Housing Counselor, Ms. Davidson is one of only seven housing counselors in New York State certified in Reverse Mortgage Counseling. Her areas of expertise range from foreclosure avoidance, loss mitigation, financial coaching, and reverse mortgage to estate planning, training and development, and emergency preparedness and response. Her certifications include homeownership counseling and not just of first-time home buyers, but of program managers and executive directors. After working on Wall Street in the financial industry for fifteen years, Angella joined NHS Brooklyn in 2008, where she remains committed to helping hundreds of clients a year to avoid the trauma of foreclosure, strengthen their financial capability, and build intergenerational wealth. Angella holds Bachelor of Arts and Master’s degrees from Bernard M. Baruch College (CUNY).

Panelist

Ruth Gao

Associate General Counsel

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Ruth serves as Associate General Counsel at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Ruth advises on charitable program matters and impact investments at the Foundation. She also works on impact investment strategy for homeownership preservation, including heirs’ property and tangle title.

Inspired by a vision to empower social entrepreneurs, Ruth spent a year in Jakarta working for a microfinance institution before attending NYU Law with the goal of understanding how the law may be used to enable change and impact. In 2019, she returned to NYU Law as a Fellow at the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship where she supervised and taught student clinicians. She then served as Associate General Counsel at Calvert Impact, a global non-profit investment firm, advising on transactional and corporate matters.

Previously, Ruth was in private practice as an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP and O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where she counseled fund managers and limited partners in the forming and raising of and investment in private equity funds. She also maintained an active pro bono practice for various not-for-profits and small businesses.

Ruth holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law and a BBA in Strategy and Accounting with High Distinction from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.