La Shelle Dozier is retiring after 23 years with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, the last 16 as its executive director. “I quickly realized this was my calling,” she said.. “I didn’t expect to stay 23 years, but it has been a wonderful ride.”
Born in Mobile, Ala., Dozier’s family relocated to Sacramento after her father got a job at McClellan Air Force Base. Raised in North Highlands, she attended UC Berkeley, where she studied industrial psychology, and later earned an MBA from the University of San Francisco. She worked at UC Berkeley, the City of Oakland, and Sacramento’s air quality district before pursuing a career in housing and community development.
Dozier joined SHRA in 2001 as a management analyst to learn the housing industry from the ground up. Her first office was “literally in the filing room,” but she quickly advanced, working on the transformation of South Sac’s Franklin Villa into 360 affordable apartment units now called Phoenix Park, directing resident services, and overseeing the Housing Choice Voucher program that today supports more than 13,000 households with up to 100 percent of the rent…