About Anna
Anna Teye-Kasongo is the Assistant Executive Director at the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio. In her role, she leads priorities around affordable and sustainable homeownership, community engagement, leadership and advocacy training, and faith- and mission-driven development resources. She also supports the agency’s operations and fundraising efforts. She is a graduate of the African American Leadership Academy Cohort 24 and an awardee of the Columbus Realtist Association’s Community Impact Award.
Anna began her advocacy and program development career as an International Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies double major at Denison University, where she was awarded the Presidential Medal. She holds a Master’s of Public Administration from The George Washington University, with a focus on data analysis, policy analysis, and nonprofit management.
Before joining AHACO, Anna worked for the Global Women’s Institute (supporting the U.S. State Department, Save the Children, and KAFA Lebanon) and consulted for Women’s in International Security. She has visited 20 countries on 4 continents. She loves to sing, performs with local Ghanaian gospel choirs, and is a member of the Voices of Charity praise team at Church on Genessee Avenue.
How has CONVERGENCE strengthened local partnerships?
Bloom614.org has become a catalyst for collaboration and innovation between CONVERGENCE Columbus members. With Bloom’s focus on providing guidance and transparency to the homeownership journey, it required an all hands-on deck approach and resource sharing to develop the content for the website — ensuring that every part of the homebuying process was represented.
Key initiatives and impact
Through CONVERGENCE Columbus’ collaboration with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati on the Rise Up Program, $5 million of down payment assistance was made available to first-time and first-generation homebuyers in Franklin County. Over 270 households were served in 2024. Building on that work, the team created the framework and began fundraising for the Buckeye DreamShare: a Shared Appreciation Loan designed to help another 200 households compete in the Franklin County market.
“Invest in creating consistency and transparency, and the ideas will flow. It is remarkable what happens when you bring people together monthly to create intentional strategies based off resource sharing and ‘ears to the ground’ expertise. That’s a CONVERGENCE superpower.”
— Anna Teye-Kasongo