Charles M. Collins is Chairman and President of WDG Ventures, Inc., a company engaged in the investment and development of commercial and residential real estate. Mr. Collins directs business development, corporate and equity finance and access to capital markets for the companies and affiliated partnerships.
Mr. Collins has practiced law with the firms of Steinhart & Falconer and Berkeley & Rhodes. A former Deputy Secretary of the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency for the State of California, Mr. Collins coordinated the management and policy direction of the Department of Housing Community Development and the Department of Real Estate. He served on the Board of the California Housing Finance Agency. Mr. Collins also has an extensive city planning background, having worked with Sedway/Cooke and Associates. Among his major responsibilities was directing a comprehensive study for the City and County of San Francisco incorporating economic and fiscal considerations, land use planning, transportation systems, and housing requirements for downtown San Francisco.
Mr. Collins is Chairman of the San Francisco Art Institute and Senior Vice Chairman of the National Urban League. He is a trustee of the Clark Art Institute and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he serves on the Executive Committee and chairs the Education Committee. He is a director of the San Francisco Jazz Organization and a member of Lambda Alpha, an honorary international land economics society. He was a member of the Social Policy Advisory Committee of the Bank of America, former trustee of Williams College and of the San Francisco State University Foundation.
Mr. Collins received his Bachelor of Arts with honors from Williams College (1969), his Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973), and his Juris Doctor from the Harvard Law School (1976). Under a fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, he was awarded a Diploma from the Athens Center of Ekistics in Athens, Greece where he engaged in a variety of international real estate, national and regional research and development projects.
Mr. Collins is the author of The African Americans, Viking-Studio Books 1993 (paper 1995) and senior editor of A Day in the Life of Africa, fall 2002.
