Brian Swanton

Bio:

Brian Swanton was promoted to President & Chief Executive Officer for Gorman & Company in 2018, after serving as Arizona Market President since 2008. During his tenure as Arizona Market President, Brian launched Gorman’s first major geographic expansion and led a multi-disciplinary team that designed and constructed over 1,000 units of new housing across Arizona with an emphasis on permanent supportive housing for families, seniors, Veterans, and the chronically homeless populations in both urban and rural locations. He also redeveloped some of the first public housing units in the country utilizing HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, helped secure the state’s first ever Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) grant, and grew the Arizona market into Gorman’s largest and most profitable with a team of over 100 professionals.

As President & CEO, Brian oversees all of Gorman’s business units, including design, construction, development, property & asset management, and corporate services, including a team of over 400 professionals across the United States. Prior to joining Gorman, Brian held various leadership positions in the non-profit sector where he directed the preservation and construction of over 2,300 units of housing in 29 residential communities across Arizona and successfully refinanced and/or repositioned 1,702 units of existing affordable housing. He also spent eight years of his career in the public sector, having served as the Housing Development Manager for the City of Scottsdale, as well as other positions in housing and community development with the City of Glendale, AZ, the Arizona Department of Housing, and the City of Quincy, MA.

Brian holds a Master of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning, both from Arizona State University (ASU), where he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in housing finance and neighborhood revitalization. He is also certified as a Housing Development Finance Professional by the National Development Council. Brian is the past Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Arizona Housing Alliance, Arizona’s only statewide affordable housing advocacy organization, guiding the organization through a merger with the Arizona Coalition to End Homelessness in 2017. Brian is also an active member of Greater Phoenix Leadership, the Arizona Multihousing Association, the Housing Advisory Group, the Affordable Housing Developers Council, and the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition where he advocates on the federal, state, and local levels to advance affordable housing resources across the U.S.

Brian, and his wife Leah, serve on the Board of the ASU School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, where they have also endowed the Brian & Leah Swanton Urban Planning Scholarship, which annually awards two scholarships to students intending to utilize their work in the urban planning field to positively impact distressed communities across the United States while helping to create social equity amongst low income populations.