ROCKVILLE, Md. — HJ Sims, a Connecticut-based lender, has hired Melissa Messina as senior vice president of investment banking. She will be located in the Rockville office.
Prior to Sims, Messina was a principal in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., offices of Miles & Stockbridge and a member of the firm’s Real Estate and Transactional Finance Practice. There, she focused on public and commercial finance, with a particular emphasis on real estate, senior living, healthcare and economic development.
With experience as counsel to banks, issuers, underwriters, developers and trustees on a wide range of transactions, Messina’s experience in healthcare finance includes representation of lenders and underwriters for commercial and public finance transactions spanning for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Her main focus was on nonprofit CCRC financing, for-profit skilled nursing and assisted living communities, asset-based lending to the operators of such organizations, and bridge-to-HUD financing transactions. Altogether, she assisted on transactions totaling more than $750 million.
While practicing law, Messina was a member of the Council of Development Finance Agencies and the National Association of Bond Lawyers. She has been a speaker at local and national conferences regarding tax-exempt municipal finance, primarily covering topics relating to tax increment finance and tools for tax-exempt public infrastructure finance.
Messina earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor’s degree in information sciences from the University of Maryland R.H. Smith School of Business.