Advising executives, elected officials, and teams

Roberta Achtenberg is a Founding Partner of ABK City Advisors. Achtenberg has more than 30 years of senior-level leadership experience in business, government, and law, and currently serves on private-sector and public-sector boards and as a corporate advisor in public policy. Achtenberg is a former Commissioner of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011. She served for 15 years as a Trustee of the California State University System and for two years as its Chair. Achtenberg was a Co-Founder of the Economic Equity Network, dedicated to transforming communities of color with Opportunity Zone capital. She is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Bank of San Francisco and Senior Advisor in Community Development to FivePoint. She also spent five years as a Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco where she chaired the Affordable Housing Committee. Achtenberg served in the Clinton Administration—first as Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and later as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of HUD. She co-led the HUD Agency Review Team for the Obama Transition. She is also a former elected member of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors.

Lori Bamberger is a Founding Partner and serves as Managing Director for ABK City Advisors. Previously, she was a Co-Founder and Project Director of the Economic Equity Network, dedicated to transforming communities of color with Opportunity Zone capital. Recently, she served as Interim Director of the Women’s Leadership in Diabetes (W!LD) Network, a professional development organization for health care, pharma, biotech, and digital technology leaders dedicated to improving outcomes for people with diabetes. Bamberger leads a consulting practice to launch and manage entrepreneurial ventures and impact organizations, specializing in structuring innovative partnerships and identifying community capital. Her prior executive roles have included: Deputy Director of San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing (under Mayor Gavin Newsom), Assistant Chief of Staff of the U.S. Dept of Housing & Urban Development, Counsel to U.S. Senate Housing Subcommittee, Vice President of Providian Financial, Executive Director of Saving Neighborhood Energy, Director of Mills College Public Policy Programs, and Founder/CEO of an online media company for women athletes, syndicated as Sports Illustrated's women's website.

Bruce Katz is a Founding Partner of ABK City Advisors. Katz is also the Founding Directing of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, which aims to help cities and states design, finance and deliver transformative initiatives that promote inclusive and sustainable growth. Katz is also a Partner of the Accelerator for America. In all this work, Katz is a leading thinker developing strategies for realizing the full economic and social potential of Opportunity Zones. With Jeremy Nowak, Katz invented an Investment Prospectus tool to enable cities to communicate their assets and advantages, identify investable projects and attract market-oriented equity capital. Already, dozens of cities have created Investment Prospectuses. Katz was a Co-Founder of the Economic Equity Network, dedicated to transforming communities of color with Opportunity Zone capital. Katz was the Centennial Scholar and the founder of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, which he led for 20 years. Before joining Brookings, Katz served as chief of staff to U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Henry Cisneros during the first term of the Clinton Administration. Katz is the co-author of The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism (Brookings Institution Press, 2018) and The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy (Brookings Institution Press, 2013).