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Shaun Donovan Biography

Government Official

Shaun Donovan became Barack Obama's Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 2009. He heads the agency that promotes home ownership, oversees public housing, and grants federal funds to local community planning and development organizations. From 2004 to 2009, Donovan headed New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, overseeing a $7.5 billion program to build and preserve affordable housing. Before that he managed federal lending and affordable housing investments for Prudential Mortgage Capital Company; was as a deputy assistant secretary at HUD in the Bill Clinton administration, responsible for privately owned multifamily housing; and worked for a nonprofit lender and affordable-housing developer in New York City.

Extra credit: Donovan received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Harvard University in 1987 and returned to earn two master's degrees in 1995, in architecture and in public administration... He is married to Liza Gilbert, a landscape architect. They have two sons, Milo and Lucas.