Cypress Community Development Corp

Irina's bio coming soon!

Craig Savage is Cypress CDC’s expert on sustainable building, best practices in residential construction, and building technology. He works closely with clients and builders on site to streamline the construction process and ensure our homes are operate at peak performance.

Craig has a 50+ year construction-focused work history that includes carpentry, contracting, construction writing and editing, magazine publishing, building education and training, tradeshow production and marketing and sales.

Residential construction and better building practices weave through Craig’s entire work life. He began his career doing construction demolition, when as a three-year old he hammered a hole in the party wall between his house and his grandmother’s. After working his way through college framing homes, Craig remodeled houses and built custom homes for the next 20 years.

When he wasn’t building or remodeling, Craig published two construction-computing newsletters, wrote two construction books, and traveled the US teaching construction office automation at conferences and trade shows such as IBS, AIA, Remodelers Show, EEBA, and more.

This lead to a position at The Journal of Light Construction magazine where he started as an editor, then quickly shifted to VP of Sales where he helped the magazine add the (then unique) social website jlconline.com, and invent an interactive, demonstration-driven trade show, JLC-LIVE. It was at JLC where Craig got to meet many of the construction-craft heroes now recording and transferring their knowledge through This is Carpentry.

Following his time at JLC, Craig did a short stint selling and producing show houses for BobVila.com, and in 2002 co-found and developed Building Media Inc., an online construction training company.

At the age of 70, Craig retired for 3 weeks, before joining the Cypress CDC team. When he’s home in Santa Barbara, CA, Craig works out of a 9’ x12’ shop, mostly using restored antique hand saws, planes and chisels to build furniture pieces. But if truth be told, he enjoys sharpening his chisels more than using them….and splits the rest of his spare time teaching two grandsons how to do demolition.

Renowned for her work on innovative housing solutions for disaster recovery and workforce housing, Marianne Cusato is the partner in charge of design and development at Cypress Community Development Corp.

In addition to her work with Cypress CDC, Marianne serves on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture where she represents the School in coordinating with the newly formed Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate.

Marianne has been ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry by Builder Magazine, voted one of the 30 Most Influential Women in the Housing Economy by HousingWire Magazine and selected by Fortune Magazine as one of the Top Women in Real Estate. Her 308 sq. ft. Katrina Cottage design won the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2006 "People's Design Award."  That same year, Congress appropriated $400 million for an alternative emergency housing program based on Marianne’s designs.

She has been honored with the American Society of Interior Designers “2007 ASID Design for Humanity Award,” the American Institute of Building Designers (AIBD) Florida Society “2007 Honor Award of Excellence,” and in 2014 with a “Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Award” from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

Marianne and her work are featured often in the media including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, Time magazine, The Week, InStyle Home, Fine Homebuilding, Next City, Curbed, Custom Home, Consumer Reports, Builder magazine, Architectural Record, ABC News, CNN, CNBC and NPR.

The author of two books: The Just Right Home: Buying, Renting, Moving...or Just Dreaming--Find Your Perfect Match! with Daniel DiClerico (April 2013, Workman Publishing) and Get Your House Right, Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid, with Ben Pentreath, Richard Sammons and Leon Krier, foreword by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (January 2008, Sterling Publishing), she has been a contributor to FORTUNE Magazine and wrote a regular column for Fine Homebuilding Magazine.

Marianne holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and MBA from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business.

Pat is a partner in Cypress CDC's affiliated company, The Cypress Group, an advisory and advocacy firm based in Washington DC, focused on financial services, disaster housing, tax, and other public policy. Pat works with Cypress CDC to manage the Cypress Capital Partners Fund I, an Opportunity Zone fund that focuses on disaster housing.

In an independent study in business school, Pat developed a view that the corporate strategy consulting firms did a poor job of measuring legislative and regulatory risk, and that the “Influence Industry,” namely lobbying and public relations firms, lacked the formal business training to advise their clients well. The Cypress Group grew from that view, and today, is a strategic advisory firm that advises clients on public policy risk and opportunity.

Previously, Pat served as an Assistant Secretary (Acting) at the U.S. Treasury Department. At Treasury, Pat oversaw the Office of Financial Institutions Policy. Prior to his time at Treasury, Pat spent seven years working for former Chairman Richard H. Baker, of the House Financial Services Committee’s Capital Markets’ Subcommittee, as his senior advisor.

Pat, who hails from the state of Louisiana, holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a BA from the University of Virginia and also studied urban design at Columbia University. He is a passionate advocate for New Urbanism, and has developed neighborhoods, and housing for over 460 Louisiana families, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Pat is married to Annah Cave and a proud father of three kids, Frances (16), Louisa (14), and Walker (13).

Jennifer Monk serves as Development and Construction Manager for Cypress CDC. Jennifer’s experience in real estate development and construction spans more than fifteen years and encompasses both private development and government housing programs.

Jennifer served as Program Manager for the Louisiana AHPP for Cypress Realty Partners; she was responsible for overall program management including planning, design, construction, and reporting and served as the focal point for communication among the various involved parties to assure that required work is completed on time and within acceptable budget.

In addition to working for the State administering entity, the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Unit of the Office of Community Development, Jennifer worked daily with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and local partners including the Louisiana National Guard at Jackson Barracks, the Housing Authority of New Orleans, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, Providence Community Housing, Habitat for Humanity, and Preservation Resource Center. Jennifer worked closely with local communities and municipalities throughout the projects and held community meetings in order to obtain local input and encourage participation.

Jennifer was also responsible for the company's financial plans and policies, maintenance of fiscal records, and the preparation of all financial and funding compliance reports, including DHS/FEMA, AARA, and HUD funding sources. As a sub-grantee on a FEMA disaster recovery program, Jennifer led Cypress’ reporting and compliance efforts that included but not limited to New Market Tax Credits, Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments, Davis-Bacon, NEPA, NHPA, Buy American, ADA/UFAS, 44 CFR Part 13, Hope IV, Public Housing Funds, and all Section 3 requirements.

Jennifer is from Louisiana, graduated with degrees in Public Affairs and Political Science from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and has an MBA from the University of Houston’s Bauer School of Business. Jennifer is married to Charles Monk and has a spirited daughter (Davis, 4) who keeps life full of fun.