Ida B. Wells Award Honoree
About Hannah Kilson

Hannah is a Partner at Nolan Sheehan Patten LLP in Boston, Massachusetts, where she concentrates her practice on real estate transactions in the area of affordable housing and community development. She represents nonprofit and for-profit developers, borrowers and lenders in real estate transactions involving commercial and public financing throughout the Commonwealth. Hannah is experienced in structuring multi-family, mixed-income and mixed-use developments utilizing commercial financing coupled with federal and state low-income housing tax credits, historic tax credits and state public financing. She is experienced in all stages of commercial real estate transactions, including land acquisition and disposition matters, leasing, and permitting. Over the last several years, Hannah and her colleagues at NSP, have represented several housing authorities located in the Greater Boston area in the redevelopment of their federal public housing stock through the creative use of HUD’s repositioning programs and federal low-income housing tax credits.
Prior to joining Nolan Sheehan Patten LLP, Hannah was the Deputy General Counsel of Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, the Commonwealth’s largest economic development authority, where she was responsible for the day-to-day management of the Agency’s Legal Department and handled legal matters associated with the Agency’s redevelopment and financing efforts, including the redevelopment of the former Leverett Saltonstall State Office Building into 100 Cambridge Street and the redevelopment of the former Northampton State Hospital site into a mixed use, planned village community. Prior to MassDevelopment, Hannah practiced in the real estate group at DLA Piper LLP (US) in Boston and at Hill & Barlow P.C. in Boston and clerked for Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court of the District of Massachusetts. She has been recognized by Best Lawyers in 2020 to the present.
Hannah is currently serving as President-Elect of the Boston Bar Association (BBA) and a member of the BBA’s Executive Committee. She is one of the lead coordinators of the BBA’s Women of Color Attorneys’ Leadership Forum which is focusing on the professional development and advancement of women of color attorneys in the Boston legal community. She previously served as BBA Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary and Co-Chair of the 2018 Annual Meeting Steering Committee. She was a member of the BBA’s Crisis Response Working Group, which worked to coordinate the BBA’s response to COVID-19 related matters concerning access to justice and the administration of law. Previously, she was Co-Chair of the Real Estate Section, Co-Chair of the Affordable Housing Committee of the Real Estate Section, and a member of the Joint Governance Committee. She was also a member of the Immigration Working Group which authored a set of immigration principles utilized by the BBA in formulating its ongoing policy position on immigration matters at the state and federal level. Presently, she is a trustee of the Boston Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the BBA.
Beyond the BBA, Hannah’s civic engagement activities focus on affordable housing, homelessness, civil rights, and education. She is a member of the Multi-Family Housing Advisory Committee of the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency and a member of Horizon for Homeless Children’s Advisory Committee. Hannah is a member of the directors of the American Civil Liberties Union – Massachusetts and serves on its Executive Committee. For a number of years, she served as a member and then Chair of the Massachusetts Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts Committee and on the Board of Bar Overseers’ Bar Counsel Search Committee. Hannah has previously served on the Board of Trustees and as Co-Chair of the Education and Diversity Committees at The Advent School in Boston, on Fontbonne Academy’s Strategic Planning Committee, on the Board Directors of The Lawyers Clearinghouse for Affordable Housing and Homelessness, and on the Board of Directors of the Museum of African American History in Boston, Massachusetts.
Hannah received her law degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, a master’s degree in urban educational policy from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from Amherst College.
A longtime resident of the City of Boston, Hannah resides in Jamaica Plain with her spouse Joe Kuchtic. She is the proud mother of their three emerging adult children, Caila, Zuri and Ciaran Kilson-Kuchtic. An avid runner and endurance athlete, Hannah has run in numerous road races including the Boston Marathon in 2018 and several sprint triathlons in New England.