Advisory Committee
RELUI's advisory committee is made up of industry leaders, Department of Real Estate representatives, and CSU faculty.
Christine Baker is a realtor at Willis Allen Real Estate in San Diego specializing in residential properties. She has been invited to speak on various real estate industry panels and at broker events. Christine serves as the President of Friends of Downtown San Diego, a non-profit that has awarded over $750,000 in scholarships to San Diego City College students. She also serves on the Board of Governors of the University Club, a private social and business club in Downtown San Diego.
Eileen Brewster is the Licensing Manager at the California Department of Real Estate.
Mitch Guidry has been a California real estate agent since 1990, specializing in residential real estate. He is currently a Mortgage Loan Originator at Mountain West Financial in Sacramento. He earned his B.S. in Business Administration from Louisiana State University.
Nuriddin Ikromov, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Real Estate and Finance, CSU Sacramento. Dr. Ikromov holds a Ph.D. from Penn State. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in real estate finance and investments, business finance, and urban economics. Prof. Ikromov's research interests include real estate market efficiency, housing, experimental economics, and valuation. Prof. Ikromov is a member of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, American Real Estate Society, Lambda Alpha International, and Urban Land Institute.
Lingxiao Li is an Associate Professor of Finance at California State University, Fullerton. Professor Li earned her Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison after earning a Master’s from the City University of Hong Kong and undergraduate degrees from Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and Renmin University (China). She has taught core real estate classes and has published her research in areas of real estate finance including housing wealth and consumption channels and information sharing and housing market outcomes, among other topics.
Jeff Oboyski is the Assistant Commissioner, Licensing, California Department of Real Estate.
Jeanne Radsick, California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) President, is a 30-plus-year real estate veteran with Century 21 Jordan-Link & Company in Bakersfield, Calif. She has served at the local, state, and national levels of organized real estate. On the National Association of REALTORS® Board of Directors since 2003. She has served on Land Use and Environmental, Conventional Finance, was Chair for the MLS and Policy Committee in 2015, Chair of Technology and Emerging Issues, and also served on a Mergers and Acquisitions Task Force relating to the MLS. Currently she is also on the Executive Committee.
Lori Redfearn, ex-officio, is the Assistant Vice Chancellor, Systemwide Advancement
The California State University and a CSU Fullerton alumna.
Patrick Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Finance, San Diego State University. Dr. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Real Estate from Georgia State University. He is the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award - J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University (April 2015).
Some recent publications include Smith, P. S. (2020). Quality-adjusted House Price Indexes. American Economic Review: Insights.; Liu, C. H., Nowak, A. D., & Smith, P. S. (2019). Asymmetric or Incomplete Information about Asset Values? Review of Financial Studies, 33, 2898–2936.; Smith, P. S., Zahirovic-Hebert, V., & Gibler, K. (2019). Building Social Capital at the Expense of Principals: Evidence from Residential Real Estate Agent Trading Networks. Journal of Real Estate Research, 41, 147–182.
Gerd Welke, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Real Estate and Finance at Cal Poly Pomona. Earning his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, Professor Wilke is a recognized researcher in the area of real estate finance.
Melanie Stallings Williams, J.D. is the Executive Director of the Real Estate and Land Use Institute and a Professor of Business Law at CSU Northridge.
About the Director
Melanie Stallings Williams is a professor in the Department of Business Law at California State University, Northridge and the executive director of California’s Real Estate and Land Use Institute (RELUI). Professor Williams teaches business law, negotiation and business ethics at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has taught, as well in international business programs at ICN (Nancy, France), INSEEC (Paris, Bordeaux), Toulouse Business School, and Corvinus University (Budapest). Her areas of academic research include antitrust law, intellectual property, ethics, biotechnology, small business programs and pedagogy. She is the past chair of the department and director of graduate studies in the college.
Professor Williams has a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She is a member of the State Bar of California and has practiced in the areas of civil litigation, business matters and intellectual property. She volunteers to help foster children, serving on the advisory board of the Foster Care Project and as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for foster children (CASA).