Building on a Foundation of Community

NEST Community Partners was born from a simple recognition: our region's greatest challenges—affordable housing and accessible early care & learning—are deeply interconnected. Families need both to thrive, and communities need both to remain vibrant and economically diverse.

We saw an opportunity to address both challenges together, creating community spaces that serve multiple generations and purposes. By co-locating affordable housing with early care and learning facilities, we can create efficiencies, build community, and maximize impact on the families and neighborhoods we serve.

Our Mission & Vision

Together with partners, we create vibrant community spaces that foster connection and opportunity, prioritizing affordable homes and early care and learning. Our vision is simple: homes people can afford, neighborhoods people love, and a region where all generations can grow, connect, and thrive together.

Our Guiding Principles

Opportunity Through Place

We believe place matters. Where you live shapes access to opportunity, sense of belonging, and the ability to thrive. We build strong communities by investing in great neighborhoods, creating affordable homes near what people need to live well and stay connected across generations, professions, and perspectives.
Quality for Generations

We build places our children and grandchildren are proud to call home. This commitment to quality means we invest in thoughtful design, function, and co-creation for every place and space. Our future-minded approach ensures every space is created to serve communities for generations to come.
Purposeful Grit

Real estate development is hard. Affordable housing development is harder. Doing it in a way that centers community voice, prioritizes quality, and innovates new financial models is harder still. We approach these challenges with imagination, persistence, adaptability, and a drive to deliver impact.
Trust-Based Collaboration

We can’t do this work alone. Our impact depends on being an excellent partner to residents, other nonprofits, developers, funders, and the broader community. We communicate openly, listen deeply, believe in trust and abundance, and show up with reliability, kindness, appreciation, and joy.

Meet the Team

Our team brings together diverse expertise in real estate development, early childhood education, finance, community organizing, and nonprofit governance. Together, they provide strategic guidance and ensure we remain accountable to our mission and the communities we serve.

Kate Redman

Executive Director
Kate Redman is a community enterprise attorney and developer specializing in cooperative real estate, nonprofit structures, and tax-exempt governance. As co-founder of Commongrounds Cooperative in Traverse City, she brings together rigorous financial and legal expertise with a genuine passion for building spaces that foster opportunity and connection. Her work reflects a deep commitment to creating spaces where people and place thrive together.
Marilyn Chrumka

Board President
Marilyn Chrumka is Vice President of Development at Michigan Community Capital, where she leads community-driven real estate development projects across Michigan. Her work spans adaptive reuse, mixed-use, and housing projects, with a focus on structuring complex financing and collaborative delivery from concept through construction. She brings a practical, detail-oriented approach, balancing technical rigor with a strong sense of place and long term impact. She lives in Traverse City and enjoys spending time outdoors with her family.
Mike Brown

Board Vice-President
Mike has over 30 years of experience as a construction and real estate development professional. He has a passion for supporting community development through non-profit organizations.
Matt Hollander

Board Treasurer
Matt Hollander is a second-generation housing developer with deep expertise in real estate finance and the full development lifecycle, focused on creating high-performing, sustainable affordable housing in Michigan. With over 45 years of family experience, he also works as a building performance consultant, educator, speaker, and designer advancing net-positive energy and water outcomes without sacrificing resident comfort.
Kate Hunt Robinson

Board Member
Kate Robinson is a designer, strategist, and nonprofit founder committed to shaping environments that support children and families long term. She launched Everbloom Montessori, a 501(c)(3) working to expand access to high-quality early care and learning while advocating for systems-level change in support of working families and care professionals. Drawing on extensive design and facilitation experience across nonprofit, startup, business innovation and social enterprise work, Kate brings a future-focused, collaborative approach to building community first spaces and systems.
Deb Lake

Board Member
Deb Lake is Chief Philanthropy Officer at Goodwill Northern Michigan, leading philanthropy, communications, and strategy for a regional housing and food security campaign. With 20+ years of nonprofit leadership, she serves on the Traverse City Housing Commission, advancing affordable housing solutions. She also serves on the board of The Pathfinder School, an independent Pre-K-8 school focused on experiential learning.