Director
Renowned for her work on innovative housing solutions for disaster recovery and workforce housing, Marianne Cusato is a Professor of Practice and Director of the School's Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative, a “Think-and-Do Tank” that provides assistance to municipalities and nonprofit organizations to improve economic development by reimagining the built environment. This work targets immediate local impact as well as national and global influence through projects, research, and education.
In addition to her work at Notre Dame, Marianne is the partner in charge of design and development at Cypress Community Development Corp, a not-for-profit housing corporation dedicated to creating resilient and energy efficient homes that are also dignified and attainable. Cypress CDC’s built work includes the development 450 Katrina Cottages in Louisiana through FEMA funding; as well as the homes in the Florida Keys following Hurricane Irma; in Sonoma County, California following the 2017 wildfires; in Panama City, FL, rebuilding from Hurricane Michael; and in Baton Rouge, LA rebuilding from flooding.
Marianne has been ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry by Builder Magazine, voted one of the 30 Most Influential Women in the Housing Economy by HousingWire Magazine and selected by Fortune Magazine as one of the Top Women in Real Estate. Her 308 sq. ft. Katrina Cottage design won the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2006 "People's Design Award." That same year, Congress appropriated $400 million for an alternative emergency housing program based on Marianne’s designs.
In 2023, the Financial Times included Marianne’s company, Cypress CDC, as One of 20 Leading Organizations Helping to Rebuild Broken Worlds. In 2024, Marianne was appointed by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC), an organization chaired by the Governor of Indiana, to serve on the READI 2.0 Review Committee (Regional Economic Acceleration & Development Initiative) to help guide where $500 million in economic development funds should be allocated in the state of Indiana. She serves on the Board of Trustees of INTBAU, the International Network of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, a global network dedicated to creating better places through traditional building, architecture, and urbanism; founding Royal Patron, HK King Charles III.
The author of two books: The Just Right Home: Buying, Renting, Moving...or Just Dreaming--Find Your Perfect Match! with Daniel DiClerico (April 2013, Workman Publishing) and Get Your House Right, Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid, with Ben Pentreath, Richard Sammons and Leon Krier, foreword by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (January 2008, Sterling Publishing), she has been a contributor to FORTUNE Magazine and wrote a regular column for Fine Homebuilding Magazine.
Marianne holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and MBA from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business.
