Women in Public Finance Set to Honor SEC’s Martha Haines

CHICAGO — The Chicago-based Women in Public Finance will recognize the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Martha Mahan Haines, a public finance banker and Los Angeles’ debt manager, at its fifth annual founders awards reception next month.

The organization will give its lifetime achievement award to Haines, who is an assistant director and chief of the SEC’s Office of Municipal Securities in the agency’s Division of Trading and Markets.

The “She’s Our Hero” award will go to Natalie Brill, chief of debt management for Los Angeles. The rising star award will go to Samantha Costanzo, a senior vice president and lead Midwestern banker in the Chicago public finance office of Jefferies & Co.

The lifetime achievement award honors the accomplishments of a woman who has worked in municipals for at least a decade, demonstrating skill, drive, integrity, and vision. The hero category recognizes a woman who successfully juggles career, self-development, family, and civic activities. The rising star award honors a professional who has worked less than a decade in the business and demonstrates skill and intelligence likely to have a long-term effect on the field.

Haines joined the SEC in 1999 after practicing public finance law for more than two decades in Chicago as a partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP and Altheimer & Gray and as an associate at Chapman and Cutler LLP. She is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law School.

Brill has managed the city’s debt since 2000. In addition to managing a debt portfolio of $6.3 billion, she is leading negotiations on a public-private partnership for the city’s parking structure project. Brill serves on the Government Finance Officers Associations’ debt committee and is active on various boards and with her children’s school.

Costanzo began her public finance as an analyst with Citi in New York City in 2001. She relocated to Chicago in 2004 and joined Jefferies in 2009. Since joining the firm, she has led its entry into senior underwriting pools for high-profile clients in the Midwest while working with women’s mentoring organizations and other charitable organizations.

WPF chose the recipients from new nominations and those submitted in past years. The founders and past award recipients selected the winners, said Courtney Shea of Acacia Financial Group. The WPF founders — Standard & Poor’s senior managing director Sarah Eubanks, consultant Nancy Remar, financial adviser Lois Scott, and Shea — launched the awards in 2007.

Though the organization started in Chicago, it now has a membership of hundreds, with representatives of issuers and financial and legal firms across the ­country.

“Our goal is to recognize women in the industry that have made significant contributions,” Shea said.

WPF will hold a reception and awards ceremony Jan. 18. at the Encore Lounge at the Allegro Hotel in downtown ­Chicago.

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