Gretchen Ellis

For more than three decades, Gretchen Rathgeber Ellis has helped organizations make consequential financial and strategic decisions. As Partner and Chief Financial Officer of The Prime Family of Companies, she has led mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, strategic planning, and investment decisions involving billions of dollars. She serves on the firm's three-person investment committee and has negotiated and structured more than $5 billion in financings and strategic transactions while overseeing finance, accounting, legal, and human resources.

Gretchen has also devoted more than two decades to nonprofit leadership. She served on the boards of both SafePlace and Austin Children's Shelter and became the founding board chair of the organization that first united the two agencies before their transition to SAFE Alliance. She later served as Co-Interim Chief Executive Officer of The SAFE Alliance and currently advises the CEO on organizational strategy, governance, finance, and executive initiatives while chairing the board of SAFE's affordable housing subsidiary.

Gretchen earned her PhD in Public Policy from The University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs. Her dissertation examined the effects of affordable housing policy on neighborhood and tenant outcomes using quasi-experimental methods and administrative data. Drawing on records from nearly every Low-Income Housing Tax Credit development in Texas and more than 750,000 tenant records, her research demonstrated how public policy can influence where affordable housing is developed and who benefits from those investments.

Her professional interests include organizational finance, executive leadership, nonprofit governance, affordable housing policy, and translating research into practical decisions for executives, boards, and policymakers.