About Us

The Nelrod Company is...

The Nelrod Company is one of the country’s premiere affordable housing and energy efficiency consulting firms. Originally conceived with the simple mission of empowering a few struggling small housing communities, the company has since transformed assisted housing operations nationwide. Today, we provide a range of consulting and assessment services to agencies, corporations, and clients of all sizes.

Our Mission: "Build a stronger America, one Family at a time."

Our History

Nelson Rodriguez

Initially founded as Resource Exchange by Carlos Garcia and Nelson Rodriguez in May 1985. The Nelrod Company was later incorporated in September 1990 in Fort Worth, Texas by its President and CEO – Nelson Rodriguez.


During the mid-80s, there were only a few private consulting firms specializing in affordable and assisted housing in the entire nation –even fewer of those have remained successful. While other leading consulting firms tended to focus on large agencies, The Nelrod Company went against the grain. We chose to instead focus on smaller housing communities – those with similar problems, but fewer available resources.


In addition to consulting services, The Nelrod Company has performed hundreds of facilities condition assessments for clients across the country. These assessments are used for short and long-term cost planning and help our clients to identify millions of dollars in rehabilitation and energy efficiency improvements for residential and commercial buildings.


In an attempt to better service our clients, The Nelrod Company received accreditation from the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) to establish a new inspections division – FOX Energy Specialists.


Established in 2000, FOX Energy Specialists combined years of affordable housing industry experience and additional building science training to become one of the top producing energy testing and rating companies in the country. Since its establishment, FOX has inspected, audited, or rated more than 40,000 separate building structures for our clients.


Today, The Nelrod Company still specializes in providing management, planning, and training services to the affordable and assisted housing industry. However, we have since expanded our service offerings to include technical assistance to almost every facet of management and federal program operations. Accordingly, we have assisted more than 3,720 assisted housing agencies, hundreds of construction companies, and more than 35,400 individual clients in the United States and overseas.

Leadership

Every member of our team is a thought leader who has made significant contributions to our society. 

Each one brings a unique set of skills and expertise to our organization. 

Joshua Rodriguez

With over 20 years’ experience in the Affordable Housing industry, Mr. Rodriguez leads in the strategic, management and operational planning for The Nelrod Company. Mr. Rodriguez experience includes and extensive background in systems planning and development of business processes for agency operational systems. Including systems for performing utility allowances, rent reasonableness studies, energy audits, quality assurance reviews, and physical needs assessments.


Mr. Rodriguez has extensive knowledge of system development and process design to bring The Nelrod Company to the forefront in creating innovative and proven operational solutions for affordable housing agencies nationwide. His strategic thinking and business process design have created multiple web-based systems for the affordable housing industry. Including the country’s first HUD-compliant and reliable web-based rent reasonableness determination system that allows users to receive rent determination reports within minutes, , a web-based Rental Integrity Monitoring (RIM) system which is a quality assurance system that facilitates the performance of tenant file reviews, and a web-based Utility Allowances system which allows agency personnel to develop utility consumptions and calculate utility allowances.


Mr. Rodriguez holds a BS in Information Systems and MS in Healthcare Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.

James Rodriguez

Mr. Rodriguez serves as the Executive Vice President for Fox Energy Specialists promoting energy efficiency and green construction practices to both the residential and commercial sectors. Mr. Rodriguez has been with the firm for 9 years and in that time has been involved in virtually every facet of the business, including strategic direction, operations, training, business development, marketing, sales, government affairs, and finance. Additionally, he oversees the daily efforts of a team of over twenty (20) full-time employees and a workforce of over eighty (80) certified energy inspectors and auditors. Since 2001, Fox Energy Specialists has inspected and tested more than 42,000 buildings nationwide.


Before joining our team, Mr. Rodriguez spent four years in Washington, DC as a strategic consultant after completing his Bachelor of Arts at The University of Texas at Austin.

Jacob Rodriguez

Mr. Rodriguez serves as Vice President overseeing numerous managerial tasks integral to the smooth operation of the firm's day-to-day business. During his more than 14 years with the firm, he has been involved in nearly every aspect of the firm's internal business operations. Additionally, he serves as Leasing Manager for La Mancha Business Centre and the firm's commercial real estate property subsidiary. The Centre hosts more than 26 different corporations and other businesses.


Mr. Rodriguez holds a Bachelors of Applied Arts & Sciences from The University of North Texas.

           


Mark Vogeler

Mr. Vogeler serves as Vice President of Operations for our firm. He is responsible for quality assurance for all divisions and oversees company planning and production of services. Additionally, Mr. Vogeler assists with the research and development of new products and systems to improve delivery of services to our clients. He has more than fourteen (14) years of experience providing technical guidance and other consulting to our multi-industry clients.



Before joining our firm, Mr. Vogeler spent nearly 20 years as CEO and Division Vice President for several local government agencies.

Tracy Edwards-Henson

Ms. Edwards-Henson manages data to day operations of the Nelrod Consortium. She oversees the policy and procedures development for over 251 partner government agencies. Additionally, she supervises video production for over 250 on-demand training classes offered to clients. Ms. Edwards-Henson is a frequent technical trainer in our weekly technical training classes broadcast on-line to clients, as well as, a technical consultant to clients like San Francisco Housing Authority, Virgin Islands Housing Authority and more.


Prior to her employment with the firm, Ms. Edwards-Henson served as Director of Section 8 HCV Program at the Dallas Housing Authority, and Family Self-Sufficiency Coordinator and Occupancy Specialist for the Clark County, NV Housing Authority.

Cheryl Lord

Ms. Lord serves as the Director for ResidentLife Utility Allowances division. She has over 30 years of experience providing excellent service to our company clients. During this tenure, she and her staff developed over 1900 utility allowance studies for more than 400 client agencies to meet numerous federal government program requirements. Additionally, Ms. Lord assisted in revising and updating the federal government’s “Public Housing Utility Allowance Guidebook” which replaced the 1998 version.


Before joining our team, Ms. Lord managed her own business for eight years and completed significant coursework in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Valencia Barber

Mrs. Barber serves as the Director for Federal Client Services and our D.C. office. She has more than twelve (12) years of Project Management and consulting experience with our firm. In that time, she has served as Manager for several multi-million dollar government contracts where she managed the administration and monitoring of contracts, many times simultaneously. She has extensive experience in developing and monitoring budgets. Additionally, Mrs. Barber has directed the daily operations of several major government call centers and federal consumer programs for our clients.


Prior to joining our team, Mrs. Barber spent nine (9) years serving as Client Services Coordinator for large government organizations.


Mellany Brown

With over 32 years’ experience in human resources and business management, Ms. Brown has performed salary comparability studies, developed job descriptions, and provided other HR services for hundreds of public housing agencies.

 

As the AccuWage Salary Study Division Director and the Human Resources Manager for The Nelrod Company, Ms. Brown accumulates, organizes, tabulates, and analyzes information for salary/wage comparability studies, job description analysis, performance evaluation systems, and benefits reviews. She updates and writes job descriptions and personnel policies, conducts applicant screening and recruiting, and improves organizational and operational structures and staffing.

 

Ms. Brown brings to her efforts a thorough knowledge of compensation, benefit administration, orientation, training, recruiting, policy administration, employee relations, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity compliance, as well as HR Federal, State, and local compliance.

 

Ms. Brown graduated Valedictorian from Droughon’s College of Business, attended Office Administrator’s School in St. Paul, MN, and is certified through the HR Certification Institute as a Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and through the Society of Human Resource Management as a Certified Professional (SHRM-CP).


Janell Hoppe

Ms. Hoppe serves as the National Manager for the EZ-Reasonable Rent Determination division and is responsible for the design and implementation of federal program compliant rent comparability studies and quality reviews. She has more than twelve (18) years of experience with our firm performing comparability studies for agencies ranging from 20 units to more than 20,000 units. During this tenure, Ms. Hoppe helped develop the country’s first web-based rent reasonableness system.


Before joining our team, Ms. Hoppe honed her managerial skills as an executive assistant to numerous corporate managers in Sales, Human Resources, and Health/Disability Insurance.

Johnnie Watson

Mr. Watson serves as the Director for our Facilities Management division. This division is responsible for performing facility improvement needs assessments and energy audits for our government and commercial clients. In Mr. Watson’s tenure with our firm, he has distinguished himself with several industry certifications, as well as helped lead the division to produce more than 180 energy audits and facility assessments for clients throughout the United States. Notably, Mr. Watson was an active part of the development team which created HUD’s Green Physical Needs Assessment (GPNA) Tool. This software tool is designed to document facility improvement needs for the federal government’s entire housing portfolio and commercial building under the purview of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.


Prior to joining our firm, Mr. Watson managed his own construction business, as well as, served as a construction manager for a national home building corporation. Additionally, he successfully completed the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School while serving six (6) years in the U.S. Navy.

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