Professional Affiliation

Managing Director of International Markets Office of Capital Markets, Ginnie Mae

Expert Bio

Alven Lam is Managing Director of International Markets at Ginnie Mae, a wholly government owned corporation within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington D.C. He is responsible for developing and implementing international investors strategic engagement plan outreaching to Ginnie Mae’s overseas stakeholders including private and public institutions with direct and indirect decision making authorities to the investments of US$1.7 trillion GNMA securities.

Mr. Lam served as Director of International Research at HUD from 2002 to 2013 prior to joining Ginnie Mae. He had manages research projects and policy seminars on international housing and sustainable urban development exchange at HUD. In 2001, he managed the U.S.-China Housing Initiative, which is a Presidential bilateral collaboration between HUD and the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development with the focuses on finance and building technology. He developed international policy training and collaboration projects with USAID, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, United Nations Habitat Program, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Governments of Spain, Mexico, Canada, Uganda, Ghana, El Salvador, Japan, Korea, and other multilateral banks and international organizations.  Mr. Lam specializes in urban development and housing policy, housing finance, geographic information system, local finance, and property taxation.

He has served in the U.S. delegations to major multilateral meetings including the UN-Habitat Governing Council, UN Commission on Sustainable Development, UN Commission for Population, and the World Urban Forum in Spain, Canada, and Brazil.  Since 2010, Mr. Lam has been actively participated in the Energy Work Group within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and has served on the U.S. Delegation to Tianjin, China, San Francisco, Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei on low-carbon city projects.  Within the APEC framework, he has also developed a U.S.-Chinese Taipei collaboration project on knowledge sharing platform to support President Obama’s Energy Smart Community Initiative (ESCI) in Asia. 

Mr. Lam has been invited to speak in many global forums such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Korea, the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development, APEC, the World Bank, Asia Real Estate Society, Global Chinese Real Estate Congress, International Association of China Planning, Harvard Asia Conference, and Financial Times. Prior to joining HUD, he was research fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Lam received a doctoral degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.