President Barack Obama has nominated Helen R. Kanovsky to be General Council of HUD. Kanovsky is currently the chief Operating Officer of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust.  The Trust is a $3.4 billion registered investment company which invests in housing securities for its institutional investors, who are union and public pension plans. The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust has provided over $5.25 billion to finance 86,000 units of multifamily housing creating over 58,000 union jobs in the construction industry. Kanovsky previously served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator John Kerry. She was Executive Vice President and General Counsel of GE Capital Asset Management and its predecessor, Skyline Financial Services Corporation. She was a partner and associate at Dickstein, Shapiro and Morin. She served as Special Assistant to Secretary Patricia Roberts Harris at HUD, HEW and HHS. For the past three years she has been the Chair of the National Housing Conference and she is a member of the Boards of the Center for Housing Policy and the Special Olympics of the District of Columbia, as well as a Trustee of the National Labor College. She holds an A.B. cum laude from Cornell University where she was Phi Beta Kappa and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. Kanovsky has two children, Dr. Jennifer Dorfman, a resident in emergency medicine; and Emily Dorfman, union organizer. read more…