The Rutgers Alumni Association’s Loyal Sons & Daughters Award is its highest recognition of service. Recipients are individuals who have made a meaningful and long-standing contribution to the betterment of Rutgers by performing extraordinary volunteer service or by making a significant impact on university life and culture.
Christiana Foglio, DC’84, BSPPP’86 is one of six individuals selected this year. She joins fellow alumni Hollis Alphonso Copeland Jr. RC’78, Anthony Covington SAS’15; RBS’15, Jim Kelly RC’79; RBS’81, Sheila Kelly Hampton DC’70, and Joshua P. Weiss RC’96 as 2026 honorees.
They will be honored at the Rutgers Alumni Association 2026 Loyal Sons and Daughters Event on Saturday, April 18, 6:00-10:00 p.m. at the Livingston Campus Center. Tickets are available by visiting https://www.rutgersalumni.org/loyal-sons-and-loyal-daughters/2026-loyal-sons-and-daughters/
Since graduating from Douglass College, Christiana has devoted herself to serving the Rutgers University community through her service on the Rutgers University Board of Trustees, the Rutgers University Foundation Board of Directors and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey Director’s Advisory Board. Over the years, she has given generously to the Douglass Residential College BOLD Center for Leadership, Career, and Personal Development and their annual BOLD Career Conference for students, which is named in her honor.
She was also a member of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Advisory Board and is a contributor to the Bloustein School Academic Excellence Fund and Bloustein’s Healthy Communities Initiative Fund. At the Bloustein School, she established the Chris R. Foglio Annual Graduate Fellowship in Planning, which supports female graduate students enrolled in the Master of City and Regional Planning program.
In 2013, Christiana was honored with the Bloustein School Alumni Career Achievement Award, which recognizes an alumnus who has made significant personal and professional contributions, having demonstrated the highest standard of the public service ethic and whose commitment to civic improvement has brought credit to themselves and to the school. She is the founder and CEO of Community Investment Strategies (CIS), Inc., overseeing all real estate and investment activities to find creative ways to merge public funding and private capital to invest in making communities better. An industry veteran with more than 30 years experience in the private and public sectors, specializes in building senior and multi-family housing that reflects each community’s vision, needs, and character.
Prior to forming CIS, she served on behalf of two governors as executive director of the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, where she was responsible for over $1 billion of multi-family bond financing and is credited with creating the state’s housing policy as well as national awards for innovative state housing initiatives. She also was appointed by Governors Florio and Whitman to serve as chair of the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing. Prior to joining NJHMFA, she served as president of the New Brunswick Development Corporation (DEVCO), a not-for-profit real estate development company located in New Brunswick, NJ, implementing over $300 million of urban redevelopment projects, reporting to the board of directors of J&J companies.