Meet Darvel Desroches

Darvel S. Desroches is a corporate attorney and business executive with extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, banking and real estate development. Darvel began his career at LaSalle Bank Corporation where he advised and counseled the Bank with respect to strategic acquisitions and divestitures, private placements, and national bank and bank affiliates regulatory compliance. He was instrumental in helping to create LaSalle’s New Markets Tax Credit Program through which its Community Development Group augmented its existing Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program by investing capital and making loans to businesses and real estate development projects located in low-income areas throughout the United States. Darvel then continued his career at the National Equity Fund, Inc. where he served as Associate General Counsel and administered the New Markets Tax Credit Program. In that capacity, he closed over $78 million of real estate development projects, including a mixed-use student housing and retail facility at Jackson State University. Darvel currently serves as Managing Partner of Ikenga Development Group LLC, a full- service commercial brokerage, asset management and development company based in Chicago, Illinois. He creates and oversees implementation of Ikenga’s strategic acquisition and development plans, and liaises with investment partners, lenders, and civic stakeholders to ensure development projects meet Ikenga’s core mission of revitalizing communities through responsible and sustainable development.

Darvel is a 2004 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was a member of the College’s Dean’s List for the 2002-2003 academic year. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, he is a 2001 recipient of the University’s Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Leadership, and a four-year letterman and captain of the University’s Men’s Soccer Team.