Building Homes Through Smart Finance

Joanie Hanlon Monaghan’s accounting degree has been invaluable as she shapes affordable housing nationwide

Joanie Hanlon Monaghan, BBA and MPA ’08, is putting her McCombs School of Business accounting degree to work on one of the country’s most urgent challenges: affordable housing.

Based in Colorado, Monaghan is a vice president at CSG Advisors, a national public finance advisory firm focused on affordable housing. She works with state and local housing agencies, public housing authorities, and other public or mission-driven housing organizations across the country to provide analysis and guidance so affordable housing programs and projects stay financially strong and run smoothly. It’s a role she ended up in after working for years at a major ratings agency, and before that in local government in Colorado.

“My work sits at the intersection of affordable housing and public finance,” she says. “I don’t think I ever would have dreamed this is the path I would have taken,” Monaghan says. “And none of this would have been possible without my degree from UT.”

The job entails designing and strengthening bond-financed and other affordable housing programs nationwide, helping public agencies turn policy goals into financially sustainable housing solutions. Her work spans both single-family and multifamily programs, from mortgage programs that expand access to homeownership, particularly for first-time and first-generation buyers, to rental housing programs that support the creation and long-term viability of high-quality, affordable communities.

Recently, she helped to stand up a countywide housing initiative approved by California voters. In November 2024, California voters approved Measure A, or the Affordable Housing, Homeless Solutions, and Prevention Now Transactions and Use Tax Ordinance, which established a permanent half-cent countywide sales tax to generate dedicated funding for affordable housing production, homelessness prevention, and supportive services. Monaghan’s role included the development and rollout of nine loan and subsidy products for the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA).

She says that being a CPA has “been valuable from day one,” making it possible for her to deftly navigate audits and sustainability analysis and forecasting.

The daughter of parents with accounting degrees, also from McCombs, Monaghan was accepted into the Canfield Business Honors Program. She enrolled in the introductory accounting course on her parents’ urging, and she enjoyed the course. While at McCombs, she worked as a tax intern for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and as a graduate associate for The Walt Disney Co., preparing complex tax returns and compliance reporting.

During her final year at McCombs, her career took an unexpected turn when an impromptu winter-break trip working for Vail Resorts and skiing on Vail mountain set her on a new path. Monaghan couch-surfed and helped run resort activities, then graduated with an Integrated Master in Professional Accounting (iMPA) degree, expecting to join PwC in Dallas.

Instead, she took what she thought would be a gap year, returning to Vail to work, ski, and snowboard alongside students and young professionals from around the world. “It broadened my whole world,” she says — and made her realize she wanted to stay in Colorado. She soon landed a role in Eagle County Government’s finance department, starting as a senior accountant and rising to senior finance manager and controller, overseeing audits, ACFR preparation, multimillion-dollar budgets and debt issuance, regulatory compliance, and financial systems for a 430-employee county government.

“It was great experience,” Monaghan says, “great work-life balance, and I lived where I wanted to live in the mountains in Colorado.”

Years later, looking for a new challenge, she responded to an inquiry from a recruiter at S&P Global and spent nearly eight years as director and lead analyst in its America’s Public Finance Housing group. “I’m so grateful that I got into the public finance affordable housing space,” Monaghan says. “You get into the capital markets more, and it’s really interesting.”

Her current role at CSG Advisors keeps her working in affordable housing, a job that’s interesting and fulfilling, she says. “Being able to work in finance, but having this very direct impact on building communities, making mortgages available for first-time homebuyers and lower income people, and getting people into homes — it feels really good.”

She says McCombs has been crucial to her professional success. “At UT, I got such a good base with amazing professors, learning how to approach problems and take solutions one step at a time,” she says. “The program and the classes made me feel like I have the ability and background to do anything in this space, and to adapt what I learned to different roles. My degree really opened the door for me, and I use it all the time.”

Story by Deborah Lynn Blumberg