This week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate features Alex Mehran Sr., the Chairman of the Board of Sunset Development Company and the immediate past Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sunset Development was founded in 1951 by Alex’s father who had emigrated from Iran, and today it is in its third generation of leadership, run by Alex’s son. Under Alex’s leadership, the company acquired and developed Bishop Ranch, a 585-acre mixed-use community in the Bay Area with best-in-class offices, retail, and entertainment. The development includes over 9.5 million square feet in workspace for 30,000 employees with 600 tenants including IBM, AT&T, Chevron, and GE Digital. Matt and Alex discuss the constant evolution of suburban office park developments, the successes of a multi-generational family business, and Alex’s civic leadership roles.Alex is a San Francisco Bay Area native. He graduated from Harvard College with honors and continued his higher education at Cambridge University in England where he earned a Law Degree, also with honors. After completing his formal education, Alex joined J. P. Morgan of New York where, for three years, he managed real estate companies and assets owned by the Bank. Shortly after, Alex joined Sunset Development in 1977.Beyond his civic engagement with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Alex is the Chairman of the Contra Costa Economic Partnership, a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the International Council of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Alex has two adult children. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in San Francisco.

Ben Harris, CEO of Link Industrial Properties, Blackstone’s industrial sector operating platform, joins us for this week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate. In this episode, we dive into the drivers of the robust industrial sector, especially how the overall secular changes in retail, logistics, and distribution are driving a re-make of the industrial real estate business. We also discuss Blackstone’s approach to Link and its businesses in other real estate sectors, both from the investment and operating angles, and the extraordinary growth of the Link platform from a start up to a 355-million square foot business in just over a year. And as always, we talk about Ben and his career path into this role.

With almost 40 years under his belt at Wells Fargo, Mark Myers is the bank’s Head of Commercial Real Estate. Under his leadership, Wells Fargo has been the #1 commercial real estate lender for the last 10 years. As a longtime leader in this space along with his upcoming retirement in February 2020, Mark shares his perspective on the vast changes in the real estate capital markets over this period and reflects on his career. He also expands on his outlook of the current markets and what he sees is a stable infrastructure moving forward for the business.

Our first episode in 2020 features Amy Price, Managing Partner and Co-Head of the U.S. business for BentallGreenOak. After the recent merger between Bentall Kennedy and Green Oak, which she helped orchestrate, the company has grown to become a $48B real estate investment manager with a global footprint. Amy is a senior leader in the real estate investment management business. We talk about overall trends and challenges in this sector and how she has navigated and built her career, first at Morgan Stanley and now at BGO.Amy has responsibility for the operating and financial performance of BGO U.S. business and has direct oversight of transactions, asset management, and portfolio management. Amy focuses her time on the Core, Core Plus and Development parts of the business. Amy chairs the U.S. Investment Committee for BGO Diversified and Separate Account Clients, co-chairs the U.S. Management Committee, and is a member of the BGO Global Coordination Committee.Prior to joining BentalGreenOak in 2012, Amy was a Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Investing for the Western United States at Morgan Stanley, where she was an Investment Committee member and built the real estate investment management business in San Francisco. Amy also spent time in Morgan Stanley’s New York and Hong Kong offices.Amy is Board Chair of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers (NAREIM) and member of the Urban Land Institute Global Board of Directors in addition to being a Governing Trustee of ULI. She holds an MBA with Distinction from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University.

David Brickman was appointed CEO of Freddie Mac in July 2019. He has been with the company for over two decades, previously serving as a longtime leader of its multifamily division. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Freddie’s sister GSE, have both been in government conservatorship for eleven years and there finally seems to be a feasible pathway back to private status. In this interview, David dives deep about his leadership of Freddie’s multifamily group and his rise within the organization based on his innovations, particularly in the area of securitization and housing affordability.A unique aspect of this episode is that most Leading Voices in Real Estate guests are founders or early generation leaders of companies. Due to the nature of the GSEs, there has been a lineage of chief executives before David. Freddie Mac makes housing possible for millions of families and individuals by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Since the creation by Congress in 1970, they’ve made housing more accessible and affordable for homebuyers and renters in communities nationwide. As aforementioned, in 2008 the U.S. government placed the GSEs into conservatorship, which included additional oversight for the CEO, the role David now assumes.David’s interest in real estate began at an early age, growing up in Lower Manhattan in the 1970s. During this time, he saw the empty lots start to turn into housing, offices, and retail, and he would take the subway up to the Bronx each day for high school, where he would see different urban landscapes and substantial changes happening to the city.Following his undergraduate degree, David ran a not for profit community development corporation in New York when he was only 22. He left New York to earn a master’s degree in public policy, and subsequently moved to D.C. where he worked as a consultant and pursued a Ph.D. in economics and real estate at MIT. David was approached by a colleague at Freddie Mac to join the organization full time in 1999.His first official role at Freddie Mac was senior vice president and vice president in charge of the Multifamily Capital Markets business area. In these positions, he oversaw all functions relating to Freddie Mac’s multifamily and CMBS investment and capital markets activities. He is the key architect behind several of Freddie Mac’s innovative multifamily financing products, including the Capital Markets Execution and K-Deal program, Reference Bill ARM, fixed-to-float suite of products, and Performance-Based PC, for which he holds a U.S. patent.He then was the head of Freddie Mac Multifamily, where he presided over a remarkable period of growth – raising annual production from $16 billion in 2010 to almost $80 billion in 2018 and increasing the organization from 300 staff members in four offices to approximately 1000 employees in a dozen locations across the country. He also firmly established the company’s flagship K-Deal Securitization program as one of the leading securitized products in the structured finance markets. Brickman also drove significant innovation and an expansion in Freddie Mac’s products and offerings – particularly those that serve the growing need for affordable and workforce housing.Most recently, David served as President of Freddie Mac and was responsible for all three of Freddie Mac’s business lines – Single-Family, Multifamily and Capital Markets – as well as the information technology and operations areas that support these business lines. When former CEO Don Layton was retiring, he approached David about pursuing the role, who saw it as fortuitous timing as he was ready for the next challenge.David completed all doctoral coursework for his Ph.D. in economics and real estate at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He has held appointments as a professorial lecturer of finance at The George Washington University and as an adjunct professor of finance at Johns Hopkins University.

As we wrap up Thanksgiving and head into the 2019 holiday season, we wanted to re-release an episode about hope, empowerment, and giving back with Cedric Bobo, Co-Founder of Project Destined. Project Destined is a social impact nonprofit that trains inner-city youth and military families to be active partners in sourcing and financing real estate investments. Students then receive a percentage of the profits from those investments in the form of scholarship funds.Cedric, who grew up in an underserved community in Memphis, became obsessed with business at a young age, inspired by his mother who worked for FedEx. He then received a degree in engineering, attended Harvard Business School, and spent the first part of his career in private equity, culminating in becoming an executive at Carlyle Group. Cedric has an entrepreneurial spirit, and he wanted to combine his two passions of investment and social impact, which drove him to create Project Destined in 2016. Today the program is in 7 cities and has high-profile support from real estate companies like Blackstone, Brookfield, Cortland and Walker & Dunlop and celebrities like A-Rod, Jennifer Lopez, and Mariano Rivera.In addition to this episode with Cedric, Leading Voices has interviewed many leaders in the real estate business making a difference in our communities, including Jane Graf from Mercy Housing, Jonathan Rose from Jonathan Rose Companies, Daryl Carter from Avanath, Bobby Turner from Turner Impact Capital, Ron Terwilliger from Trammell Crow Residential, John Stewart from the John Stewart Companies, and others. Visit leadingvoicespodcast.com to hear these episodes and more.

Disruptors in real estate, particularly in the PropTech sector, are topics that Matt has tackled on several Leading Voices in Real Estate episodes, including with guests like Clara Brenner, the co-heads of Lyric, Jamie Hodari, and Chip Conley. He expands on this conversation with Brad Greiwe, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Fifth Wall, the largest venture capital fund focused on the global real estate industry and property technology. Still in his 30s, Brad already has substantial career achievements (including co-founding Invitation Homes) and has created a VC fund that is differentiated from others. For instance, half of Fifth Wall’s billion-dollar VC funds come from investors inside of the industry. Additionally, the company consults with real estate clients on how to get ahead of the curve in terms of technology and innovation to drive a more sustainable performance. Brad’s entrepreneurial spirit and gravitas demonstrate how he is establishing leadership for the next generation and is at the forefront of the convergence of technology and the built environment.A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Brad’s grew up in a real estate family, with his dad working for a multifamily developer. He was recruited to play football at Harvard, and while Brad wasn’t quite NFL caliber, he capitalized on sports to propel his education. While at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, and many of his friends went towards that side of the tech industry, Brad decided after graduation to move in a different direction initially.Brad started his career in investment banking at UBS in the real estate, lodging, and leisure group, where he tallied over $33 billion of M&A advisory work and $1 billion of debt and equity financing, including the sale of Hilton Hotels to The Blackstone Group for $26 billion—the largest hotel privatization in history. He then worked in real estate private equity at Tishman Speyer and Starwood Capital, where he executed over $30 billion of acquisitions, debt financing, and development projects.Prior to starting Fifth Wall, Brad co-founded Invitation Homes (NYSE: INVH), a multi-billion dollar owner and operator of single-family rental properties originally backed by The Blackstone Group. As CTO, he positioned Invitation Homes as the dominant technology-forward brand in the single-family rental category, developing a proprietary technology stack to support the valuation, acquisition, rehabilitation, leasing, and professional management of over 80,000 homes in 17 major markets, serving 120,000 residents across the U.S.

Leading Voices in Real Estate has tackled the full spectrum of the real estate industry: multifamily, office, retail, hospitality, and now cannabis? That’s right. This week, Matt speaks with Paul Smithers, CEO of Innovative Industrial Properties, the first and only NYSE REIT serving the cannabis space. It’s hard to imagine that this type of business would exist even a decade ago, but with the changing landscape of real estate investment groups and the legalization of marijuana across the U.S., Innovative Industrial Properties tapped into an industry with huge growth potential.Founded in 2016, Innovative Industrial Properties (IIP) is the pioneering real estate investment trust for the medical-use cannabis industry. Like a traditional real estate investment trust (REIT), a corporation that combines the capital of many investors to acquire income-producing real estate, IIP invests in facilities that are a combination of industrial buildings plus greenhouses for (mostly) medical-use cannabis. IIP has invested in properties in over 12 states and will likely continue to grow as medical-use cannabis is legal in 33 states, plus the District of Columbia. On average, IIP is seeing returns between 11 and 14%.Paul and his Co-Founder, Alan Gold, hatched up the idea for the company in his backyard. Alan had co-founded two bio-tech REITs, Alexandria and BioMed, and after selling Biomed, was looking for a new venture. So, they acquired the real estate behind a marijuana grow center and, from there, created the idea behind the REIT.Paul brought over three decades of leadership experience in legal, commercial and real estate spaces, to leading the development of key growth strategies designed to achieve strong returns on investment at IIP. Prior to IIP, Paul held positions as co-founder and chief legal officer of Iso Nano International, LLC, a designer and manufacturer of advanced materials for use in the aerospace, consumer goods, electronics, and safety industries. Preceding Iso Nano International, LLC, Paul was the managing partner of Smithers & Player, Attorneys at Law.Listen in to hear how Paul is riding high off of this unique business venture!

It’s no surprise that coworking spaces are shaking up the business world. Many companies are abandoning their traditional offices, selling assets like desks and rolling chairs, and downsizing square footage to move into modern outsourced workplaces, like Industrious and WeWork. With this growing trend, competition is increasing, though no two models are identical and profits can be hard to achieve. This week’s timely discussion with Jamie Hodari, CEO and Co-Founder of Industrious, touches on just that and drills into what sets a company like Industrious apart from others.The three major takeaways from this conversation are just that:In terms of user experience, coworking spaces are extremely differentiated.Not all of these coworking businesses need to have a “unicorn model” that completely disrupts the office industry.As reflected in most Leading Voices in Real Estate episodes: A great leader can elevate an entrepreneurial idea to a successful business.Industrious is a company that follows this model to a T. The company is the largest premium flexible workspace provider in the U.S. with over 84 locations in more than 45 cities. Founded in 2013, Industrious has raised over $222 million and expects to be profitable in Q1 2020. They work in partnership with landlords, unlike the tenant of landlord models, and have secured over 20 landlord partners including Hines, EQ Office, Macerich, Jamestown LP, and most recently Equinox at Hudson Yards. Lastly, Jamie has guided the company to this growth through thoughtful decisions, by evaluating his competition, creating Industrious as a best-in-class coworking space, and partnering with established companies who are looking to revolutionize as well.To some, Jamie has had an atypical journey to the CEO of an entrepreneurial business. He grew up in suburban Detroit, Michigan, next door to Justin Stewart, who’s remained a close friend and co-founding business partner of Industrious. He started his career as a journalist at the Times of India. He also previously ran the education non-profit Generation Rwanda, analyzed investments at the hedge fund Birch Run Capital, and was a project finance lawyer at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Prior to Industrious, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Kepler, a rapidly growing experimental university that Scientific American called a “daring global experiment” to bring “top-tier instruction to the neediest parts of the planet.” He’s an Ivy League triple threat, holding a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.P.P. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from Columbia University.

The late 1980s saw massive changes in the real estate industry. The passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and then the S&L crisis that followed transitioned the industry into a modern, institutional business. During this time, Dr. Peter Linneman had just started reworking the real estate program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.Dr. Linneman was an outsider economist who saw the obvious future in information, transparency, and capital flows. This week’s conversation dives into Dr. Linneman’s experience, from his perch at Wharton where he learned from and then counseled the then giants in the industry on this transformation as well as trained the future generation of leaders in the business.Dr. Linneman’s story begins in Lima, OH, which at the time was a booming industrial city. He supported himself starting at a young age to attend private high school and went on to obtain his masters and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. During his studies, he was trained by prominent economists including Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Ted Schultz and Jim Heckman. As an economist by trade, he started his career in general economics and industrial organization, which at the time was mostly manufacturing. Soon after, he pivoted to commercial real estate.The Dean the University of Pennsylvania approached Dr. Linneman and asked him to evaluate the real estate curriculum in their business program. Following his research, he developed and designed Wharton’s renowned real estate program and subsequently served as the founding chairman of the department and the Director of Wharton’s Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center for 13 years. Quite literally, Dr. Linneman wrote the textbook for collegiate real estate programs.Beyond his time in academia, Dr. Linneman has had a tenured career as a Founding Principal of Linneman Associates, a leading real estate advisory firm; CEO of American Land Fund; and CEO of KL Realty. He’s also advised leading corporations and served on over 20 public and private boards, including serving as Chairman of Rockefeller Center Properties, where he led the successful restructuring and sale of Rockefeller Center in the mid-1990s.While Dr. Linneman is now retired from Wharton’s faculty, he and his wife Kathy support a program, Save A Mind, Give A Choice, which commits to educating young children of extreme poverty in rural Kenya. Dr. Linneman contributions to the academic study of the field has been instrumental in training the leaders of the real estate industry today and subsequent educational programs in real estate fields.