| SPONSORED CONTENT |
After graduating from old Dominion University, Jane Ferrara worked for a nonprofit in the Hampton Roads area and often interacted with local business leaders. One of them gave her the idea to enter commercial real estate. “I was young and eager, so I ended up taking a job with one of those business leaders at a real estate company,” she says. “It became the start of a 20-year career, and it was actually that career that led me to Richmond.”
Ferrara served as managing director and partner for Richmond’s Advantis Real Estate Services Co. for more than 12 years when, in 2005, she received an offer to join the administration of Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder. She spent the next 14 years leading the city’s real estate, economic development and business attraction activities.
“The city was on the cusp of real change and growth,” she says. “I viewed it as an opportunity to shape the community that I had chosen as my home. After many years of working for the city, I knew it was time for my next big adventure, so I got back into the nonprofit world.”
In 2020, Ferrara became the executive director of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Virginia, which is part of a national nonprofit organization fostering community development in cities and rural areas. “We provide financial resources to underserved communities to stimulate investment and economic opportunity,” she says. “This is especially important given the devastating impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our local economy.”
This year, LISC Virginia plans to launch a new program aimed at increasing homeownership within the BIPOC community in the greater Richmond region. “We have a comprehensive plan geared towards dismantling barriers to homeownership for BIPOC individuals over the next three and a half years,” Ferrara says. “We’re hoping this will lead to long-term generational wealth building.”
Serving with a number of professional organizations, Ferrara also was selected by Mayor Levar Stoney to serve as a fellow for the Daniel Rose Fellowship for Public Leaders, a partnership of the Urban Land Institute and the National League of Cities. In addition, she was a gubernatorial appointee to the business development and marketing advisory committee for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
In her free time, Ferrara enjoys traveling, and she is an avid walker. Recently, she’s taken up biking, and her goal is to bike a one-way trip on the Virginia Capital Trail. “I’m training to do the whole 52 miles to Williamsburg by the fall,” she says.
