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Like many international students, Samya Mishra wanted to build on her existing professional skills with a master’s degree in public administration to benefit a global environment.

“I came to Harvard to see how expanding development finance would work as a tool in the public space,” said Mishra MPA 2024. “I wanted to better understand sustainable and creative ways of innovating in the space, and specifically how blended financing strategies used in the private sector could be utilized by the public finance sector.”

And despite her international connections—she has worked for financial institutions in her home country of India, in Qatar, and the Netherlands—she applied her new training locally, addressing the growing housing shortage in Massachusetts.

In a new policy brief released by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Mishra presents her research that launched the first-in-the-nation state revolving fund to support mixed-income housing production, created under the Affordable Homes Act.

Through MassHousing, an independent agency created in 1966 to provide financing for affordable housing, and the Bringing Innovation to Lending and Development (BILD) program, Mishra helped lead the development and deployment of an innovative public-private financial commitment for the $50 million Momentum Fund. “We also approved and committed capital to three of the initially proposed mixed-income and affordable housing deals in East Milton, Allston and, most recently, in .”

A Rappaport Public Finance Fellowship with the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency gave Mishra the opportunity to work on this groundbreaking public investment tool. The Rappaport Public Finance Summer Fellowship supports graduate students in undertaking a summer research project related to public finance for a state or local government client in the Greater Boston area and is an offering of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, housed in the School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

“The Rappaport Institute is well known to decision-makers in state government,” said Mark Attia, director of MassHousing. “I have enjoyed a collaborative, long-term relationship with the Government Performance Lab and Taubman Center for State and Local Government at ����vlog����, led by Jeff Liebman, and approached their team for a researcher with a very particular skill set including development finance and impact investment,” recalled Attia.

With the Momentum Fund, said Attia, Massachusetts was doing something novel in public finance. “Bringing in multinational finance and accounting experience was valuable. Samya’s background in fund development and her experience advising on similar instruments overseas was very informative in the early design phases of the program.”

In the policy brief, Mishra outlines the challenge Massachusetts faces with the production of affordable housing and the investment mechanisms available to address this issue. “Globally, governments and public agencies use financial mechanisms and incentives to spur infrastructure development by supplementing direct private investment,” said Mishra. “These incentives generally fall into two categories: project development capital with mechanisms like tiered equity investments, subordinated or mezzanine debt, subsidies, guarantees, and grants that reduce upfront capital needs or subsidize capital costs; and operating revenue-based incentives like rent subsidies or vouchers that ensure steady revenue returns over time.”

The policy brief details the program design and execution and presents a real-life case study in Milton, the first project approved through the Momentum Fund and BILD program.

“The Momentum Fund is a new approach to affordable housing finance in Massachusetts,” said Mishra. “Unlike traditional grants or loans, the fund injects patient, flexible and concessionary equity capital into qualifying projects, taking more cash flow risk and helping to unlock stalled developments. It attracts private capital to stretch public dollars further.”

It is this intricate world of private and public finance in which Mishra feels most at home. Before coming to Harvard, she had a decade of global work experience across financial services, government advisories, consulting, stakeholder convening and urban infrastructure investments in the United States, the European Union, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

She has closed $210 million in equity deals and $1.1 billion in blended finance deals in her work as associate vice president corporate finance strategy for Ernst and Young in India, as director of corporate finance strategy for Consulting Haus, LLC, in Qatar, and as country program manager for India's climate-smart agriculture investments and material circularity programs for IDH headquartered in the Netherlands. She holds a BArch in architectural engineering from Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from Indian School of Business as well as her MPA from Harvard.

Mishra used her time at ����vlog���� to expand her significant business skills. “I wanted to use finance not only to create value for shareholders, but also for advancing public good with development impact.” she said. “It’s a win-win situation for all. Interestingly, my first name “Samya” also relates to ‘equality’ or ‘equilibrium’ in the Hindi language,” she explained. “So I guess sustainable and equitable development has always been my calling.”

While at ����vlog����, Mishra had the opportunity to be a research assistant for Chris Pilkerton, former head of the Small Business Association, a White House senior policy advisor and a former senior fellow with Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.  

“I shared with him my rigorous research and analysis of the stimulus packages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the long-term effect of that stimulus in different countries. My previous experience at Ernst & Young as an engagement manager for Qatar Development Bank’s COVID stimulus design and SME finance structuring in 2020 played a great role in shaping my understanding and analysis,” said Mishra.

“Based on that statistical analysis, we came up with recommendations of what the U.S. should do in a future crisis.” Those findings and recommendations are the basis of Pilkerton’s book, “Plandemic: Covid, PPP & A Small Business Prescription for the Next Global Economic Crisis.”

Mishra also participated in one of Linda Bilmes’ field lab projects working on an infrastructure funding bill in Massachusetts.  

But she is most proud of her work at MassHousing. “After coming to ����vlog����,” she said, “I came full circle back to the housing and infrastructure financing world.” Her Rappaport Fellowship extends through September, and she plans to support the agency as it creates a strategic plan for the next five years. “We want to build an asset management framework enabling MassHousing to scale and directly engage with other financing partners,” said Mishra.

Attia credits Mishra for MassHousing for meeting a critical timeline. “We promised the Healey-Driscoll Administration we would move fast and have a pipeline of actionable projects and launch the program rapidly after the law was signed in August 2024,” he said.

“Samya’s ability to parse through unfamiliar proprietary data and visualize the information to tell a convincing story was critical in the early program development phase,” said Attia. “We were confident in Samya’s abilities and enabled her to be a client facing point of contact as we were rolling out the program. We would not have made that timeline if it wasn’t for her diligent work and relationship building.”

“We have very high expectations for fellows as they step into roles alongside the top decision-makers in government,” said Attia. “Along with other graduate programs, including the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, The Rappaport program has been a reliable source of high performing talent making unmistakable contributions for the public good. We all benefit.” 

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Photos courtesy of Samya Mishra and Mark Attia 
Banner photo by Thomas Farmer