Howard is President & Chief Executive Officer of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Pittsburgh. Prior to joining Habitat, he was an entrepreneur and President & CEO of Christian Management Enterprises, LLC, a business management and real estate consulting firm. Howard is a recipient of the 2021 Fox Rothschild Outstanding Chief Executive Officer and Top Executive Award from The Pittsburgh Business Times. His banking career began at Equibank, where he was an Assistant Vice President. He then became Vice President of Community Development at Dollar Bank, where he led the financial institution to its first ever Outstanding CRA rating from the Office of Thrift Supervision. Howard was Senior Vice President of Public Policy & Development at the Epilepsy Foundation of Western and Central Pennsylvania.
He was also the Regional Director of Fannie Mae’s Pittsburgh Business Center, managing a $2 Billion housing investment plan throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania. His office assisted Twenty-Four thousand individuals and families in becoming homeowners during his tenure at Fannie Mae. Howard was the first President & CEO of Landmarks Community Capital Corporation, lending development funding to Community Based Organizations, who were revitalizing Pittsburgh neighborhoods. He was also the Chairman of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh’s Bank on Greater Pittsburgh initiative. Howard was an Adjunct Professor in the Ph.D. Doctoral (Community Engagement) program teaching Program Development, Evaluation and Assessment and he also taught in the School of Business, teaching Strategic Management, Introduction to Business and Essentials of Organizational Leadership at Point Park University. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught Diversity issues in Public Service and prior to that he taught at Community College of Allegheny County.
Howard serves on the boards of McAuley Ministries, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh where he is Vice Chairman of the Governance and Public Policy Committee, Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority, where he received a gubernatorial appointment from former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, Chair, Board of Directors, Howard Hanna Free Care Fund Foundation, and the Mount Ararat Community Activity Center. He’s a member of the Operational Committee of the Pennsylvania Community Development Bank. Howard is a former Consumer Advisory Board Member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB); a Governmental Agency responsible for Consumer Protection in the financial sector headquartered in Washington, DC. Howard is also a former board member of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and became Chairman of the Policy Committee, which also included a gubernatorial appointment from former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. He is a former Board member of The Pittsburgh Foundation, serving on the Finance and Audit Committee.
He holds an Associate in Science degree in Financial Services, with emphasis on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate from Community College of Allegheny County, a Bachelor of Arts from Carlow University, an MBA from Point Park University, a Master’s degree in Public Management from Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz, III School of Public Management and a Doctor of Science degree in Information Systems and Communications from Robert Morris University (RMU). His doctoral dissertation was titled Financial Illiteracy, an American epidemic: A qualitative study on the effectiveness of Web-Based financial literacy technology training on African American High School students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2006. He is also an Author, his first book was published and released in the spring of 2019 on Amazon and Kindle titled, Addicted to Debt: Get Out and Stay Out.
Howard received the 2022 Carnegie Mellon University, H. John Heinz , III School of Public Policy and Management Most Distinguished Alumni Award. Howard received the Outstanding Community Service Award in 2019 from Park Place African Methodist Episcopal Church. He is the recipient of the Carlow University 2017 Laureate Award for outstanding academic achievements and professional contributions of Alumni. In 2016, Howard was named one of Community College of Allegheny County’s 50 most distinguished Alumni. In 2009, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus in the School of Communications and Information Systems at RMU. He also successfully completed the New Strategies Revenue Generation for Nonprofit Executives at Georgetown University, Governing for non-profit excellence program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business and the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He participated in the Yale CEO Leadership Summit Institute, held at the New York Stock Exchange and he completed Fundamentals of Real Estate Finance (12 classroom hours) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Real Estate. He is a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh Class IX and served on its board after completing the program. Howard also served on the Affordable Housing Advisory Council of the Federal Home Loan Bank Pittsburgh.
Howard is a Veteran with two honorable discharges and while in the Navy he was selected to work in the Department of Defense, in the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, Washington, DC, which required a Top-Secret security clearance. He also served in the 479th Field Artillery Brigade in the U.S. Army Reserves. He is a graduate of the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a United States Department of Defense joint service school offering world-class Human Relations education, training and research. He was the keynote speaker at the United States Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration’s East Coast Conference, on the dais with former Philadelphia Mayor, Michael Nutter and former United States Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, the honorable John Fernandez.
He is cited in two published books, Cities back from the edge, New life for Downtown written by Roberta Gratz, a former New York Post award winning journalist and Urban Critic and Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl, written by Carter Wilkie, a former White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and Richard Moe, former President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Howard developed and chaired the Minority Research Policy Group of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the all minority Doctoral level participants’ initial White paper was titled, Repairing the breach: Setting an Agenda for Social Sustainability Within our Region. Howard was also inducted into his High School Sports Hall of Fame for Football and he is an ordained Deacon and served three years as a Trustee and his last year as Lead Trustee at his Church, Cornerstone Ministries.