When Maria Day-Marshall was a little girl, she wanted to be exactly like her cousin. So when her cousin proclaimed she was going to be a lawyer when she grew up, Day-Marshall decided she would too. It's the kind of childhood plan that rarely carries into adulthood, but Day-Marshall’s did—through a Master of Tax Law at Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. at Catholic University, and into the world of tax and municipal finance.
In the end, her cousin became a college professor. And despite a wildly successful career in housing and finance, and a string of titles in Washington, D.C.’s Mayor’s Office, Day-Marshall eventually did too.
“There’s definitely some irony in it,” she said. “I guess I ended up following in her footsteps after all, just in a very roundabout way.”
Day-Marshall retires this summer after nearly two decades of teaching and leadership for the University of Maryland’s Real Estate Development Program. A 30-year veteran in affordable housing and finance for the likes of Fannie Mae and the District of Columbia (where she served as district treasurer and was honored for her public service by three mayors), Day-Marshall was first lured into higher ed in 2008 by former colleague Margaret McFarland, who had just launched a fledgling Real Estate Development program for UMD the year before— if she took the job as an adjunct professor, she’d lend her expertise a few evenings a week to mostly working professionals pursuing their master’s degrees.
Despite managing a sizable portfolio as interim executive director and general counsel for the DC Housing Finance Agency, she said yes. The daughter of two retired educators, it was the chance to realize a lofty dream she’d entertained for years with a close friend and colleague to create a course about capital markets. The program debuted “Capital Markets and Real Estate Investments for Developers” that year, which was the first advanced finance course offered in the master’s program and is still being offered today.
”The dream suddenly came to fruition,” she laughed. “And I’ve always been open to exploring new opportunities and seeing where they take me.”
The opportunity, she said, took her farther than she thought. One day over lunch nine years later, she confided in McFarland that she was planning to leave the DC Housing Finance Agency, but hoped to still teach a class or two. Little did she know, McFarland was planning her own retirement—as director of the Real Estate program—and was looking for a successor.
“She had a lot of experience and knew a lot of people,” said McFarland. “The program is so multidisciplinary, it was funded differently and it was only one of seven in the country not in a business school. I knew she had an appreciation for all of that. And I knew it wasn’t just anyone who could pick it up.”
Marshall was named director in 2017, picking up where McFarland left off and during a period of intense growth for the program: it had just debuted two undergraduate minors in construction management (a partnership with the School of Engineering) and real estate development. It soon became clear there was an appetite for more undergraduate offerings; after a rigorous process spearheaded by Day-Marshall, the university’s first major in Real Estate and the Built Environment debuted just five years later. The first graduates of the program were awarded diplomas in 2023.
“It was just a dream come true,” said Day-Marshall, about the program’s growth. “There are not many new majors created at the university, period. And it quickly became the fastest growing major on campus.”
True to her reputation, Day-Marshall continued to grow the faculty through the close connections she had made through her 35 years in the industry, bringing on new adjuncts and hiring two new full-time faculty. She cultivated new experiences and professional opportunities for her students, working in her capacity as director of the Colvin Institute for Real Estate Development to launch international and local partnerships, fund conference attendance, arrange lectures, host awards events and launch an annual student trip to New York City, where alumni offered behind-the-scenes tours of Manhattan's biggest design/development projects.
For years, she mentored students with colleagues Ron McDonald, Rob McClennan and Matthew Bell to bring teams of Terps onto the national competition stage. Under her watch, UMD was a finalist in a string of ULI-Hines competitions, took first place twice in the NAIOP Capital Challenge and won the HUD Affordable Housing Competition three times, where they were perennial finalists.
In 2019, she and Clinical Associate Professor Tanya Bansal co-founded the U.S. Africa Collaborative with Elizabeth Glenn, a retired planning professional, and a group of housing agency executive directors and academics. The collaborative is a consortium of practitioners and researchers examining affordable housing on both continents, a passion of Day-Marshall’s. It has hosted several conferences and launched a global classroom between students from UMD and Nelson Mandela University.
Day-Marshall says that while McFarland birthed the program, she was both honored and proud to raise it. She shepherded many programmatic victories; but even more students, now working professionals that are changing the landscape of the world’s built environment.
“When you start out with them, they really have no knowledge of real estate development,” she said. “And to see them grow and mature over the years they’re in the program is very rewarding. But I think the most rewarding thing is to see my students doing so well in the industry.”
Marcus Ervin, director of development and acquisitions for Archer Greenwood and MRED ‘09, credits Day-Marshall for opening his eyes to affordable housing, which he turned into a career for Howard and Montgomery Counties, and as senior vice president of Multifamily Lending and Neighborhood Investments at the D.C. Housing Finance Agency—Day-Marshall’s old stomping grounds.
“She remained a teacher to me and a mentor over the course of my life and career,” he said.
Because of the nature of development, Day-Marshall crosses paths with former students all the time. And sometimes, they become colleagues. Just as McFarland had convinced Day-Marshall to lend her expertise at Maryland 20 years ago, Day-Marshall has lured several students back to teach, including Ervin in 2018, a full circle moment for both of them.
“It took us a long time to get to the point where our students were in a position to come back, to give back,” she said. “There is something really meaningful about seeing your students achieving that kind of success.”