Shekar Narasimhan

Shekar Narasimhan is the Managing Partner at Beekman Advisors which provides strategic advisory services to companies and investors involved in real estate, mortgage finance, affordable housing and related sectors. Shekar is a Co-Founder for the Remergent Communities Fund, an Opportunity Zone Fund, focusing on small towns and cities in the Southeast U.S. He also serves as Chairman of Papillon Capital, focused on sustainable infrastructure investing. Prior to Beekman Advisors, Shekar Narasimhan was a Managing Director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Company, one of the nation’s leading providers of commercial mortgage financing. Immediately prior to Shekar’s time at Prudential, he was Chairman & CEO of the WMF Group, a publicly traded, commercial mortgage financial services company. WMF was one of the largest such firms in the country before being acquired by Prudential in 2000.

Shekar is currently serving on the boards of Broadstone Net Lease, Inc., Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., Democracy Alliance and the Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership. He is on the Council of Advisors for the Center for American Progress and is a member of the Urban Institute’s Policy Leadership Council. He has served on many boards, including the Low Income Investment Fund, the Community Preservation and Development Corporation, the National Housing Conference and the National Multi Housing Council. He is a sought-after speaker on housing finance and affordable housing and is considered a leading expert on rental housing issues in the United States.

Shekar is a former Chairman and Commissioner for the Virginia Housing Development Authority. Previously, he also served as a Member of the Board for Housing and Community Development in Virginia, and as a Commissioner on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Shekar co-founded and is President of the Dharma Into Action (DhIA) Foundation, an association of Dharmic American leaders and philanthropists collaborating to create a community-based think tank that identify and respond to urgent needs in the community by providing resources, knowledgebase and relevant information to serve Americans in need. He was on the founding board of Indiaspora, a nonprofit organization founded by community leaders to unite Indian Americans and to transform their success into meaningful impact in India and on the global stage. Shekar was also Co-Founder of Upakar Foundation, a higher education scholarship fund.

Shekar has served several terms on the Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA) Board of Directors, was the first Chair of the MBA’s Commercial/Multifamily Board of Governors (COMBOG) and founded its Multifamily Steering Committee. He was elected as the first Chair of the Fannie Mae DUS Advisory Committee.

Shekar is a businessman/entrepreneur who has spent many years promoting sound public policy in the United States as it relates to affordable housing and economic justice including testifying before the US Congress. His political interests include supporting progressive candidates (including Indian Americans) at the national level when he became the Co-Chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Indo-American Leadership Council. Since then, he has played various roles through the Democratic National Committee and in every Presidential campaign since 2004.

Shekar has received numerous awards and recognition in the real estate industry including the MBA’s highest honor in 1999 and the Fannie Mae Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Dean H.J. Zoffer Distinguished Service Medal from the University of Pittsburgh. Shekar holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India and an MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has earned the designation of Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB).