Teresa BardwellSacramento, CA – Teresa Bardwell, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, Rural Development Specialist, Housing Counseling, possesses a wide range of training expertise on multiple topics and platforms at state, regional and national venues. Ms. Bardwell is skilled at delivering training on housing counseling and leadership; affordable housing, economic and community development and board and strategic planning for nonprofit and tribal housing organizations.

Ms. Bardwell joined RCAC in 2004 and provides technical assistance and training for housing counseling agencies in the RCAC region (Western US) as well as nationally. She is a recognized expert in federal housing counseling program compliance and is a member of the National Industry Standards Advisory Committee. Ms. Bardwell has been on faculty at NeighborWorks America since 2011 and conducts both classroom and webinar housing counseling training.

In 2008, RCAC partnered with the California Housing Finance Agency to oversee NFMC funding from NeighborWorks. Once funded, RCAC sub-granted funds to 29 HUD-approved counseling agencies in California. Upon conducting site visits at these agencies, RCAC realized that most did not understand HUD requirements and did not even have a copy of the HUD Handbook on site. To rectify this, Ms. Bardwell developed a one-day class in partnership with HUD to teach HUD requirements to counseling agencies. The class was delivered in numerous California locations, then later in Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho and Washington.

In 2012, Ms. Bardwell again partnered with HUD to remake the one-day training into a series of five webinars: Client Management Systems; Loss Mitigation; Counseling Plans; Reporting; and Counseling Requirements. This series was marketed nationally and each class recording was posted on RCAC’s website for several years.

Compliance oversight for 85 agencies and three federal programs during the foreclosure crisis has given Ms. Bardwell broad knowledge of the housing counseling field. Additionally, Ms. Bardwell provides strategic planning and board and leadership development for the RCAC region. She has expertise in training and technical assistance for tribal and rural affordable housing organizations.

A RCAC-focused Leadership Program team member, Ms. Bardwell has delivered leadership development curriculum since 2009. She is the team lead on the RCAC internal team for teaching adult participatory training techniques to staff and has taught this curriculum for other federal agencies including USDA Rural Development.

Prior to joining RCAC, Ms. Bardwell was the housing administrator for the Arapahoe County Housing Authority in Colorado. She supervised all facets of the county’s homeownership program including marketing, counseling, client education, underwriting second mortgages, inspections, closings, subordinations and tracking required by federal regulators and funders. Her position with Arapahoe County as Grants Fiscal Specialist also gave her a thorough understanding of housing grant principles and practices, grant management and budgeting. Prior to that, Ms. Bardwell worked with Wells Fargo during a six-year period, primarily as a vice president in commercial real estate lending.

Ms. Bardwell holds a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University with a major in English and a minor in Education. She continues to follow her passion and develop new curriculum and hopes to release several new courses through RCAC in the coming months.

CONGRATULATIONS TERESA BARDWELL, YOU ARE A CHAMPION OF SERVICE!

THE BRIDGE is pleased to recognize Champions of Service who have provided exemplary service in the Housing Counseling arena and Success Stories highlighting clients’ achievements. Nominations of persons both inside and outside of HUD are welcomed. Please send your nominations each month to thebridge@hud.gov.

This article reprinted in full with permission from The Bridge.