Nicki Pecori Fioretti
Nicki Pecori Fioretti (MBA ‘96) works tirelessly in the field of housing and community development administering a portfolio of programs which support building a strong middle class by investing in households and their communities. She has been the director of community affairs at the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) since 2013.
At IHDA, Pecori Fioretti and the community affairs department work with staff across departments and with external partners including units of local government, HUD-certified housing counseling agencies, community-based organizations, regional planning commissions, and land banks.
Their work designing and administering program initiatives benefit local communities in several ways including initiatives that create vibrant communities by putting vacant and abandoned properties back to productive and taxable use, rehabilitating existing homes, providing housing and financial literacy counseling services that help residents become sustainable homeowners, and developing technical assistance programs that help build capacity of housing and community development practitioners. One of her many accomplishments there included coordinating a community empowerment track for an IHDA statewide conference that brought national and statewide perspectives to and provided information about redevelopment and revitalization strategies. She is a frequent speaker at housing forums, and she serves as a liaison to finance affordable housing alternatives statewide while simultaneously balancing the fiduciary responsibilities of a financial institution.
Prior to her current role at IHDA, Pecori Fioretti served as director of finance and development. In that function, she oversaw programmatic research related to finance and debt issuance specifically in the areas of risk, ratings, and collateral. She has led financing teams responsible for coordinating the issuance of IHDA capital market products from conceptual stage to closing, totaling over $1 billion. Another key success in that role involved her conceptualizing, marketing, and moderating a multi-sector Preservation Initiative Roundtable to raise awareness about a $184 million federal financing resource with narrow deadlines. Over 80 professionals participated and gained additional knowledge about IHDA and federal programs. She has been with IHDA since 1995.
Pecori Fioretti has served on the board of advisors for the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago since 2007 and was recently appointed as a Quinlan representative to the Loyola University Chicago Alumni Association Board. She was also an inaugural school board member at the Hope Institute Learning Academy and past chair of the Hope School Foundation Board of Trustees, which supports the Hope Institute for Children and Families in providing education, residential, and health care services to children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities throughout the Midwest.
She also served on the boards of Women in Public Finance, the Women’s Leadership Council, Loyola, Chicago Area Bradley University (alumni board), and the Gold Coast Neighbors Association. She is a member of Necessities 100 of the Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation and previously served as a volunteer program coordinator for the Chicagoland Starlight Children’s Foundation.
Pecori Fioretti earned her MBA in finance at Loyola University Chicago and her BS, cum laude, in mass communications at Bradley University. She and her husband, Bob Fioretti, live on the Near West Side in Chicago.
AC24 Session: Preserving Single-Family Affordable Housing
