Brynn Sanders

Founder and President

Brynn Sanders brings 14 years of NMTC experience and a 360-degree perspective to her client work. Sanders is active on the Novogradac and Opportunity Finance Network conference circuits, where she shares her expertise in structuring difficult but impactful small loan funds. Known for her sharp negotiating skills and exceptional discipline managing complex situations in a highly structured investment world, Sanders asserts that a distressed community’s transformation cannot be achieved through large real estate projects alone. Small business vitality plays a crucial role, and Sanders has both the aptitude and enthusiasm for unlocking capital to catalyze business-driven growth.

U.S. Bancorp CDC
Sanders began her career in the legal department at Bank of America, but a passion for community investing awakened at U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, where she helped launch their Federal New Markets and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Syndications in 2008. During her tenure, Sanders’ group placed more than $1 billion in community-enhancing tax credits with third-party investors, and Sanders herself managed a $1.5 billion portfolio of NMTC investments.

Advantage Capital Partners
In 2013, Sanders was recruited to Advantage Capital Partners structuring group, where she grew an existing $80 million business line in QALICB consulting and CDE loan fund services to $450 million in four years. She worked closely with investment partners, lenders, and portfolio companies to originate funds, structure closings, monitor regulatory compliance, and manage assets, including troubled asset workouts, among other responsibilities.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
Sanders moved to LISC’s New Markets Support Company in 2017 to establish a new business line creating and managing loan funds with both NMTC and non-NMTC focused partners. She also worked with third-party CDEs to assist with outsourced asset management and NMTC application services.

Affordable Equity Partners
To round out her NMTC perspective, Sanders joined Affordable Equity Partners in 2019 to raise debt and equity capital for the affordable housing firm, working with Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). There, she secured $30 million of structured debt and equity, as well as construction commitment letters, from four new partners despite economic and travel challenges presented by the pandemic. She also wrote two NMTC applications and assisted in deploying and capital raising for their Georgia rural jobs loan fund.

Lived Experience
Raised in a distressed rural Missouri community by a single mom, Sanders is empathetic to the challenges facing low-income communities and is passionate about driving change. She was the first in her family to attend college, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Finance from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a Master of Business Administration from Southeast Missouri State University.