MHBA’s National Modular Housing Conference

2026 Conference Speakers

Join us at MHBA’s National Modular Housing Conference from November 16-18. The premier event for professionals in residential modular construction. This annual gathering unites builders, developers, architects, engineers, and suppliers to network, share ideas, explore innovative solutions, and gain insights from expert-led sessions. Hosted by the Modular Home Builders Association, the conference offers a valuable platform for professional growth and collaboration within the modular housing community.

Keynote Session

Housing and Economic Outlook

Robert Dietz, Ph. D.

Chief Economist

National Association of Home Builders

Robert Dietz, Ph.D. is the Chief Economist for the National Association of Home Builders, where he leads a team of 12 economists whose responsibilities include economic forecasting, industry surveys, and policy research. Dietz has published academic research on the private and social benefits of homeownership, federal tax expenditure estimation, and other housing topics. He is the nation’s leading analyst of the residential construction industry.

During this session, join Dr. Dietz, for a timely look at the economic and housing forces shaping the residential construction market. Gain an overview of the broader housing and economic outlook, including NAHB’s macroeconomic forecast and the potential impact of Federal Reserve actions, while highlighting recent data and trends in modular and panelized construction.

The presentation will also examine NAHB’s housing forecast, including single-family and multifamily starts, pricing trends, and the outlook for manufactured housing. Finally, Dr. Dietz will explore long-term factors influencing housing demand, including demographics and other structural trends that could affect the size and composition of the housing market in the years ahead, providing modular home manufacturers with economic context they can use to better understand current market conditions and plan for the future.

Opening Panel Discussion

Research and Innovation in the Offsite Construction Sector

Set the tone of the conference with this opening panel presentation with well know industry advocates discussing the latest in research and innovation in the modular and offsite construction industry.

Jason Van Nest, Director, NYIT Center for Offsite Construction

Jason Van Nest is a licensed architect working in New England, an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at New York Institute of Technology, and currently serves as President of the NYIT Academic Senate. An entrepreneur and founder of Logic Building Systems, he brings extensive expertise in offsite manufacturing and architectural design.

As an educator, Van Nest has taught more than a dozen courses at New York Tech, as well as graduate computational design at Yale School of Architecture and representation courses at the New York School of Interior Design (NYSID). He holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and a B.S. in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Andrew McCoy, Managing Director of the Coalition for Smart Construction, Virginia Tech

Dr. Andrew McCoy is the Beliveau Professor in the Department of Building Construction at Virginia Tech, where his teaching and research focus on the commercialization and diffusion of innovative technologies, residential systems, and affordable housing. He has authored over 100 books, peer-reviewed articles, and conference papers, while serving as Principal Investigator on millions of dollars in funded research covering green residential practices and supply chain safety.

Dr. McCoy previously served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Construction Education and Research and has received numerous top honors, including the ENR Top 20 Under 40 (Mid-Atlantic), the 2015 Virginia Game Changer Award, and the Historic Richmond Golden Hammer Award.

George K. Guszcza, President & CEO, National Institute of Building Sciences

Dr. George Guszcza brings over 25 years of global executive experience in the built environment spanning public, private, and non-profit sectors across the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Prior to leading NIBS, he served as Chief Transformation Officer at Michael Baker International, COO of Neal Richards Group, and EVP for Finance and Administration at Adams and Associates.

As founder/CEO of Aedifos Group, he spearheaded the restart of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital project, and as an active duty US Army Medical Service Corps officer, led a team of 3,000 architects and engineers restarting 240 hospitals and over 1,200 clinics in Iraq. Dr. Guszcza holds a B.S. from West Point, an M.S. from Oxford University, and a Doctor of Engineering from The George Washington University.

Highlighted Session

The Urban Modular Playbook: How Cities are Accelerating and Unlocking Modular Construction for Housing

Angela D. Brooks, FAICP, Urban Development Officer, City of Philadelphia

Angela D. Brooks, FAICP, serves as the Chief Housing and Urban Development Officer for the City of Philadelphia. Formerly, she served as the Director of the Illinois office of the Corporation for Supportive Housing and is the Immediate Past national president of the American Planning Association. With over two and a half decades of experience in urban planning, affordable housing, and community development, Brooks has established herself as a leading voice in housing policy and zoning reform.

Brooks previously served on influential boards and commissions, including the Chicago Board of Zoning Appeals, the Illinois Affordable Housing Advisory Commission, City of Seattle Planning Commission and King County Washington Boundary Review Board. She also served as the co-chair of the national Housing Supply Accelerator, working with communities nationwide to address housing needs. Her expertise is in housing policy and zoning reform.

A native of Seattle, Brooks holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Jackson State University and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans. She has dedicated her career to ensuring every human has a safe, decent, affordable place to not only call home, but to thrive.

Christina D. Long, AIA, Founder & President, Baltimore Modular

Christina D. Long, AIA is the founder and president of Baltimore Modular, a nonprofit organization serving to advance scalable systems-based approaches to addressing housing affordability and economic opportunity in Baltimore and the surrounding region while also striving to accelerate industrialized construction broadly.

Christina is also the founding principal of Vertical Architecture Enterprises LLC, a full-service architecture firm in Baltimore, Maryland. While originating from Maryland, Christina spent the bulk of her 27-year career in New York City and Boston working on large scale complex institutional projects.

Since her return to Baltimore in 2017, she has explored ways that her expertise with large projects could inform a holistic, sustainable, large-scale approach to address the vacants and lack of affordable housing. In 2024, Baltimore Modular grew out of this exploration and the conversations that were had along the way. Christina holds a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Hampshire College.

Sukanya Sharma, AICP, Senior Regional Land Use Planner, Massachusetts Metropolitan Area Planning Council

Sukanya Sharma is a Senior Regional Land Use Planner and the South Shore Coalition Subregional Coordinator at MAPC, where she works on the Generalist Team within the Land Use Department. Since joining MAPC in 2021, Sukanya has led and contributed to a wide range of interdisciplinary planning projects focused on land use and zoning, housing and economic development. She works closely with municipal partners across the South Shore Coalition Subregion to advance zoning reform, improve local policy implementation, and support capacity-building efforts.

Sukanya also supports strategic grant writing and helped secure federal funding through HUD’s PRO Housing grant and the EDA’s Good Jobs Challenge program. As Project Manager of MAPC’s PRO Housing HUD grant, she is working with various partners to create a regional strategy to expand offsite construction, particularly modular housing, as a way to accelerate housing production and create good jobs in the Greater Boston Region.

Prior to joining MAPC, she worked as an Economic Development Planner at the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission in Illinois, where she led industry and workforce analyses and supported economic and community development initiatives. She holds a Master’s in Urban Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor’s in Planning from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India where she received the Institute’s Gold Medal for academic excellence.

Presenters

Mary Anglade

Founder

Builder Lead Marketing

Alex Carmack

Director of Government Affairs

Modular Building Institute

Bob Gorleski

Industry Consultant &
Former Vice President

PFS TECO

Brien Hampton

President

Falcon Capital Advisors

Jessie Handforth Kome

Former Director, Office of
Block Grant Assistance

U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development

Michael Moglia

Chief, Housing & Buildings Standards Division

Pennsylvania Dept. of Community & Economic Development

Florin Moldovan, MCP

State Building Codes
Office Director

Virginia Department of Housing & Community Development

Jon Paradine

Division Administrator,
Building Trades

Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Bureau of Construction Codes

David Roover

Founder, Chief Growth Officer

Quartz Properties

Ken Semler

President & CEO

Impresa Modular

Eric Schaefer

Chief Business
Development Officer

Fading West Development

Jiqiu (JQ) Yuan, PhD, PE, PMP

Director, Building
Codes Administration

Maryland Division of
Labor and Industry

Presentation Details

Beyond Google: How Modular Home Builders Can Get Found in ChatGPT and AI Search

Mary Anglade, Founder, Builder Lead Marketing

In this practical session, Mary Anglade will explain how AI is changing online search—and what modular home builders and manufacturers can do to increase their visibility. Attendees will learn how traditional SEO and AI search optimization work together, why authority and trust signals matter, and how website content, FAQs, video and structured information can help AI engines understand and recommend a business.

Designed specifically for the modular construction industry, this presentation will include practical examples and actionable steps companies can take without completely rebuilding their websites or abandoning their existing marketing strategies.

IRR and Return on Capital: Why Speed Wins in Real Estate Development

Kenneth Semler, President & CEO, Impresa Modular

Most developers focus on cost per square foot, but sophisticated investors know that the real driver of wealth is how quickly capital is returned and reinvested. In this webinar, Ken Semler demonstrates how modular construction improves Internal Rate of Return (IRR) by compressing project schedules, reducing interest carry, accelerating lease-up, and enabling faster capital recycling.

Through real-world multifamily case studies, attendees will learn why time is often more valuable than first cost, how modular projects create more predictable financial outcomes, and why lenders increasingly recognize these advantages. If you're developing multifamily, build-to-rent, workforce housing, or infill projects, this session will change how you evaluate project performance and profitability.

Leveraging Modular Construction for Disaster Relief

David Roover, Founder, Chief Growth Officer, Quartz Properties
Jesse Handforth Kome, Former Director, Office of Block Grant Assistance, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Eric Schaefer, Business Development Officer, Fading West Development

From wildfires, to floods, and other natural disasters, modular construction seems like an obvious solution to these massive rebuilding efforts. But why does it seem that after ever disaster, government agencies struggle to rebuild in a timely manner? Join this interactive session as David Roover and other developers discuss how to leverage modular construction in a post disaster setting.

Roundtable Discussion: Addressing Financing Challenges for single and multifamily modular; A HUD Demonstration Project Overview

Brien Hampton, President, Falcon Capital Advisors

Brien Hampton has over 28+ years of financial markets experience and has expertise in capital markets and transaction analysis. He is an invaluable asset to the firm’s clients given his extensive experience leading market assessment, business plan analysis, and price analysis projects. His trading expertise includes a robust understanding of credit quality, deal structure, prepayment, and duration on different classes of securities. Join this interactive roundtable discussion as Brien explains a new HUD demonstration project for single and multi-family modular projects that his company was contracted to explore.

Navigating State Administrative Programs: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia

Bob Gorleski, Industry Consultant & Former Vice President, PFS TECO
Mike Moglia, Chief, Housing & Buildings Standards Division, Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development
Florin Moldovan, MCP, State Building Codes Office Director, Virginia Department of Housing & Community Development
Jon Paradine, Division Administrator, Building Trades, Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, Bureau of Construction Codes
Jiqiu (JQ) Yuan, PhD, PE, PMP, Director, Building Codes Administration, Maryland Division of Labor and Industry

Hear directly from state administrative program officials about the latest trends, updates, and challenges facing the industry. Additional state representatives may join the panel.