Annette Stevenson is a partner in the Cleveland office of Novogradac & Company LLP. She has more than 20 years of public accounting and business advisory experience, with an emphasis on complex financing for community development real estate projects, including new markets tax credits (NMTCs), historic and rehabilitation tax credits (HTCs), public/private partnerships, and other federal, state and local tax credits and incentives. Ms. Stevenson assists her clients in transaction structuring, financial modeling, NMTC compliance and reporting, due diligence and feasibility, and navigating accounting and tax issues. Her client base includes community development entities (CDEs), real estate developers, investors, municipalities and other government entities, community development corporations, financial institutions and nonprofit organizations. Additionally, Ms. Stevenson provides a broad range of advisory services to CDEs, including transaction structuring, development and implementation of internal compliance policies and procedures, monthly loan servicing and asset management assistance, compliance review and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund reporting. Ms. Stevenson serves as chairwoman of Novogradac & Company’s New Markets Tax Credit spring conference in Washington, D.C. She is a nationally recognized NMTC expert and speaker who has presented to audiences across the nation. Ms. Stevenson was the 2006 president of the Cleveland Chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) and was named to Crain’s Cleveland Business “Forty under 40” in 2009. She graduated from Cleveland State University and is licensed in Ohio as a certified public accountant. 

Carol Mihalic, a partner and head of the corporate tax group of Kutak Rock LLP’s Denver office, focuses her practice on a wide range of federal and state tax issues. In her representation of tax credit investors, leverage fund lenders, CDEs, structuring agents, developers, landlords and qualified active low-income community businesses (QALICBs), she has provided creative tax solutions to tax credit issues. Ms. Mihalic advises clients regarding structuring alternatives in transactions with multiple parties at each level of the financing and in combining new market tax credits (NMTCs) with tax-exempt bond financing, historic tax credits (HTCs) and state tax credits. Her expertise extends to advising clients on the statutory and regulatory issues associated with pre-funded QEIs, loan modifications, workouts of distressed or failed NMTC investments, redeploying NMTC funds, exiting transactions at the end of the compliance period and Rev. Proc. 2014-12-compliant HTC transactions. In addition to client representation, Ms. Mihalic actively participates in industry efforts to resolve tax and other NMTC issues and regularly speaks at tax credit and related conferences. Along with having tax credit expertise, she provides federal and state income tax planning for private and public corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships and real estate investment trusts. This portion of her practice focuses on advising a wide range of institutional clients regarding complex financial transactions involving asset-backed securitizations, various types of derivative and debt securities and other financial products, such as structuring sale-leasebacks and leveraged leases. Before joining Kutak Rock, Ms. Mihalic was a partner at Husch Blackwell LLP, specializing in the area of NMTCs, and a manager in the Tax Research and Planning Department for AT&T Broadband Corp. She received juris doctor, master’s degree and bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver. Ms. Mihalic is licensed to practice in Colorado.

Merrill Hoopengardner joined Advantage Capital Partners in 2011. Her responsibilities include structuring and closing tax-enhanced investment funds, including new markets tax credit (NMTC) transactions. She also leads Advantage Capital’s Washington, D.C., office. Before joining Advantage Capital, Ms. Hoopengardner worked for the law firm Nixon Peabody LLP, where she closed dozens of tax credit transactions and represented a number of prominent community development entity, investor and project sponsor clients. During her seven-year tenure at Nixon Peabody, she was responsible for structuring and closing more than $1 billion of NMTC and historic tax credit (HTC) financings. Ms. Hoopengardner is a seasoned public speaker and a widely published author on the subjects of venture capital as an economic development tool and the NMTC “targeted populations” rules. Ms. Hoopengardner earned both her bachelor’s degree and her juris doctor from Duke University.