COLUMBIA, MD (April 27, 2026) — Enterprise Community Partners today announced the appointment of Neill Coleman as its first Chief External Affairs Officer (CEAO). In this newly created role, Coleman will lead the organization’s philanthropy, communications, marketing, and federal policy functions, integrating Enterprise’s external strategy at a moment of historic urgency and opportunity in the nation’s housing crisis.

“Neill Coleman is exactly the kind of senior leader Enterprise needs right now,” said Shaun Donovan, CEO of Enterprise Community Partners. “His career spans multiple domains that matter in this moment — federal policy, local government, philanthropy, and communications— and he has used each to expand resources for affordable housing and scale solutions that work. Creating the new External Affairs function, and the Chief External Affairs Officer role, is a signal of our ambitions, and Neill is the right person to lead our remarkable teams. I have no doubt he will be a transformative force for Enterprise and for the field.”  

As CEAO, Coleman will oversee Enterprise’s integrated external affairs agenda, including philanthropic fundraising, investments and grantmaking; strategic communications; policy advocacy at the federal level; and marketing and brand. He will be a member of Enterprise’s executive leadership team, reporting to, and a close partner to, CEO Shaun Donovan.

“I have believed in Enterprise’s mission for my entire career,” said Neill Coleman, incoming Chief External Affairs Officer. “Housing affordability is a defining issue of our moment — in people’s lives, in our politics, and in the choices that governments and philanthropies are making about where to direct resources. Enterprise has the tools, the track record, and the relationships to expand those resources and scale the solutions that work. Integrating our development, communications, marketing, and policy work into one External Affairs function is part of how we do that. I am deeply honored to help lead that effort.”

Coleman brings more than two decades of leadership at the intersection of housing, policy, philanthropy, and communications. He served as Executive Director of Trinity Church Wall Street Philanthropies, where he grew the organization’s annual grantmaking from $8 million to $57 million, and co-developed a $100 million impact investment fund that contributed to the financing and creation of 5,500 units of affordable housing. His tenure at Trinity included grantmaking across housing, homelessness, faith-based real estate capacity, and racial justice.

Prior to Trinity, Coleman held the senior public affairs role at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he helped communicate the Obama Administration’s response to the housing crisis and repositioned HUD as a source of innovative policy. He also led communications at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development during the Bloomberg administration.

Coleman led communications strategy and grantmaking at The Rockefeller Foundation, and established his own strategic communications and philanthropic consulting practice, Mission Magnified Consulting, advising a range of housing, philanthropic, and civic organizations. His first job was working in a homeless shelter in Glasgow, Scotland — an experience that has shaped his commitment to housing ever since.  

"Neill is one of the most sophisticated thinkers at the intersection of housing, philanthropy, and communications working in the field today," said Channon Lucas, Executive Vice President of External Engagement, Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. "Enterprise is gaining a leader who understands not just how to tell the housing story, but how to use that story to move capital and drive policy change."

Coleman holds an MA from the University of Oxford. He is a past board chair of Stonewall Community Foundation and former board member at Philanthropy New York.