The Team
Robert Lay
Founder & Managing Partner
Robert has over 15 years’ experience structuring, syndicating and developing hundreds of real estate projects across the country generating over $1 billion in federal and state tax credits.
He focuses primarily on investor relationships with taxpayers including publicly traded corporations, multi-national financial institutions, family offices, and privately held businesses.
Geoff Cover
Chief Financial Officer
Geoffrey Cover, CPA, CITP, a former consulting partner in the New Orleans office of Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC joins RiseImpact’s New Orleans office as its Chief Financial Officer bringing over 15 years of public accounting experience and expertise providing tax credit advisory services to the real estate sector including complex deal structuring, financial modeling, and accounting and tax consulting and management.
Geoff is a member of the Louisiana CPA Society, AICPA, serves as an instructor of Accounting and Taxation for Loyola University New Orleans’ College of Business, is the Board President for the New Orleans Emergency Medical Services Foundation, and volunteers as an Executive Mentor for Loyola’s Business Portfolio Program.
Tyler Ramsey
General Counsel
Tyler serves as outside general counsel to RiseImpact Capital through his law firm, R&M Law Group, LLC. Tyler has a wide range of experience representing developers, syndicators, lenders and investors on projects that involve federal and state tax credits as well as other tax incentivizes, including low-income housing, historic, renewable energy and opportunity zones.
Tyler oversees general corporate matters and provides project specific advice to RiseImpact Capital.
Ari Booth
Human Resources Business Partner
Prior to joining the firm, Ari held 3 roles for the recently opened Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans (HR Generalist, Recruiting Manager, and Talent Acquisition Manager) and worked in various cities within the Four Seasons brand spanning over 6 years. She hails from Austin, TX where her immediate family resides and proudly boasts her Philadelphia roots as an avid Eagles fan (fly Eagles fly!).
A Spring 2016 graduate of American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, DC, Ari holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – Management and Psychology and is also a designated Senior Certified Professional within the world-renowned Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) while actively pursuing a Master’s Degree in Labor & Employment Relations at Penn State University. A born advocate of serving the community through the advancement of women, Ari is a proud member of the mission-driven Junior League of New Orleans and serves as Director of Operations for Heart N Hands, Inc., a nonprofit focused on educating young girls on heart health and heart disease prevention.
Christine Haidler
Manager, Investor Relations
Christine began her career at Raymond James in 2017 while earning her bachelor’s degree in public relations from Tulane University.
She manages client and investor relationships with a high degree of care and attention to detail; she strives to provide every client with an outstanding experience.
Ryan O’Krepki
Development Associate and Financial Analyst
Ryan is responsible for supporting the investment process across the organization, including financial modeling and underwriting. Prior to joining RiseImpact Capital, Ryan served as an analyst within BlackRock’s Financial Institutions Group in New York, covering institutional Insurance clients.
Ryan graduated Cum Laude with a BBA in Finance from Louisiana State University.
Trey Parker
Director, Acquisitions & Originations
With over 15 years’ experience as developer and investor legal counsel, Trey has extensive expertise in transactions involving historic rehabilitation, low-income housing, and new markets tax credits, as well as transactions involving government loan programs and opportunity zone financing. Trey currently sources and manages tax credit transactions for RiseImpact. In addition, he has spoken and presented on historic tax credits for numerous industry stakeholders.
Lisa Torres
Manager, Film & Entertainment Tax Credits
With over 14 years of experience in film and entertainment tax credits, production management, planning, and operations, Lisa is a seasoned leader in the film and entertainment industry. She has successfully managed multiple international and domestic projects, securing and maximizing tax incentives, optimizing financial operations, and ensuring quality and efficiency.
As the Vice President of Production Strategy and Tax Incentives at Fox Entertainment, she oversaw the development and implementation of strategic plans for film production across various genres and markets, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to achieve creative and financial goals.
Additionally, Lisa served as the Director and Manager of Production Planning & Operations at AMC Studios, where she supported the production of award-winning shows such as The Walking Dead, Halt & Catch Fire, Fear The Walking Dead, managing all tax credits, audits, schedules, contracts, and logistics.
Kaley Sellery
Manager, Investor Relations and Marketing Strategy
With a keen eye for strategic marketing and nearly two decades of experience, Kaley brings a wealth of knowledge to RiseImpact. She previously held several marketing roles and excelled in investor relations within real estate, including federal and state tax credits.
Kaley plays a pivotal role in driving RiseImpact’s brand presence and engaging with our investors. She is responsible for developing and implementing marketing strategies that align with the company’s goals, ensuring effective communication with investors, and fostering strong partnerships.
Michelle Silies
Director, Transactions, Operations and Compliance
Michelle brings over 20 years of legal, real estate, and development experience to RiseImpact, including the last 12 years specializing in affordable housing, historic rehabilitation, and community impact finance. She is highly experienced in facilitating federal and state tax credit financing and equity direct and syndication investments for historic adaptive reuse and affordable housing developments nationwide.
Michelle currently leads RiseImpact’s transaction operations and compliance, responsible for implementing and optimizing RiseImpact’s due diligence, underwriting, asset management, and transaction/fund administration processes and procedures to ensure developer and investor relationships achieve their individual and community goals and objectives.
Michael Wolf
Director, Acquisitions and Originations – South Carolina
Michael has over 25 years of experience in the financial industry in South Carolina. His focus is on South Carolina tax credit programs and development opportunities, including the Abandoned Building Tax Credit, Textile Communities Revitalization Tax Credit, Historic Tax Credit and Affordable Housing Tax Credit programs.
He works closely with real estate developers, CPAs, attorneys, commercial real estate brokers, bankers and other financial professionals on the syndication and monetization of South Carolina tax credit development projects.
Profile
RiseImpact Capital is a full-service tax advantaged real estate development and tax credit syndication firm.
We specialize in partnering with local developers and stakeholders to build high impact developments that transform communities, families, and small businesses. For our tax credit investors, we offer a diversified portfolio of state and federal tax credits to help manage their tax liability in addition to achieving CRA, ESG and other sustainability and societal impact objectives.
From the initial spark of a potential development idea to placing the project in service or identifying, syndicating, and managing a portfolio of state and federal tax credit investments, our team of experienced professionals at RiseImpact Capital helps both developers and investors achieve their individual goals and objectives.
Developers
Are you developing a project that will earn federal or state tax credits? Seeking a streamlined, efficient transaction and syndication structure? Or are you looking for a financial partner to help fill funding gaps and round out the capital stack?
RiseImpact Capital specializes in partnering with developers to solve these and other complicated issues associated with tax credit transactions. Contact us to learn how we can work together to take your project from the drawing board to completion.
Investors
RiseImpact Capital has worked closely with many tax credit investors including large corporations, multi-national financial services and insurance firms, small businesses, estates and trusts and individuals, and we provide a wide array of optimized tax credit investments opportunities to help our clients manage and their federal and/or state tax liability.
Our diversified portfolio of historic, renewable, workforce housing, and other federal and state tax credits offers our clients opportunity to select tax credit transactions with the most attractive yields across multiple jurisdictions and/or transactions that are most closely aligned to achieve an investor’s ESG, CRA and other sustainability and societal impact objectives.
Choices matter and our clients rely on RiseImpact to identify and manage their tax credit investments to ensure a positive impact on communities and families, encourage economic development, achieve sustainability and social impact objectives, and generate attractive investment returns.