Erika Ruiz serves as a Senior Director with Advisors, leading their Housing Practice Area, supporting the Community Resilience Practice area and leading Enterprise’s programmatic work in Puerto Rico and supporting efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She joined the Saint Mary’s Communities board in March of 2026. She is a bilingual (English/Spanish) affordable housing professional with over 20 years of experience in various affordable housing and community development specialty areas, including research, program development, communications, technical assistance and consulting, public housing programs and operations, capacity building, housing development finance, financial underwriting and financial structuring and disaster recovery. She has managed over $20 million of affordable housing technical assistance engagements, capacity building activities and grants programs funded by federal, private and philanthropic dollars.
Erika led programmatic efforts for Enterprise in Puerto Rico over 12 years and currently leads our CDBG-DR/MIT technical assistance and capacity building contract with the Puerto Rico Department of Housing and is locally engaged in supporting NGOs and local government partners in resiliency efforts in collaborating with local entities and national stakeholders. Prior to joining Enterprise, Erika served as the housing development finance specialist at SOME, Inc., a large nonprofit organization serving low-income individuals and families in Washington, DC. In this role she secured $50.6 million in permanent financing to create 290 units of affordable housing. Prior to that role, she served as a development analyst for the District of Columbia Housing Finance agency where she underwrote $65.2 million in loans and low-income housing tax credits to create and preserve 664 units of affordable housing.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in sociology, Master of Public Administration from Cornell University and recently completed a certification program in Financial Success for Nonprofits from Cornell University.