Sunshine Mathon is a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of climate resilience and equitable affordable housing development.

Sunshine is the executive director of the Piedmont Housing Alliance, an organization that builds affordable homes and fosters community through education, lending and equitable development. Through his leadership, Piedmont has developed more than 1,200 affordable and green homes in Texas and Virginia.

Sunshine strives for relationship building through human connection, cultivating place-based community developments through residents’ lived experiences and guiding policy through a racial equity lens.

Over the next 40 years, Sunshine sees the affordable housing and community development sector measuring success not by the number of affordable housing units created or investment dollars committed, but by the active closing of the racial wealth gap. He envisions programs that address disparities in wealth, education, incarceration, life expectancy and other vital measures of well-being.

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The process of envisioning a brighter future involves confronting the reality that for all our labor and investments, macro-scale racial disparities largely remain the same. The process of rectifying those issues requires courage and a willingness to evaluate our unseen complicity and possibly challenge the very system we operate in.

Sunshine Mathon

Sunshine received a bachelor’s in physics from Bates College and a master’s in architecture from the University of Texas.