Tawanna comes to The Trust after serving as the Senior Vice President for the Office of Management Operations at Ginnie Mae for the past eight years. Since 2012, she has been a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) of the Federal Government. Before her tenure at Ginnie Mae, she held the position of Executive Operations Officer for the Office of the Secretary under Shaun Donovan and Julian Castro.
With over 20 years of experience in public, assisted, and supportive housing programs, Ms. Preston has made significant contributions to the field. Notably, she managed an emergency rental assistance program for individuals with HIV/AIDS at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Northern Virginia. She also successfully relocated 14,000 families out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Before her career in housing, Ms. Preston worked as a physicist, studying radiation's effects on micro-electronic devices for space applications at the Naval Research Laboratory. She holds a master's degree in Regional Planning from Cornell University and two bachelor's degrees in Physics and Engineering Physics from Morgan State University. Additionally, she has authored and co-authored five scientific publications and was recognized in a national exhibit titled "Black Achievers in Science," sponsored by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, where she was featured among 100 Black scientists and engineers.