RIPCO Real Estate announced the hire of Betty Castro as Managing Partner for the firm’s Manhattan and Brooklyn markets.
Castro, who has over 25 years of expertise in managing and developing client focused sales teams and innovating and implementing successful strategic plans, will be working closely with RIPCO’s partners to plan and develop programs that strengthen the company, with a focus on revenue growth, recruiting and retention.
Prior to joining RIPCO, Castro was the Managing Director of leasing in the Manhattan market and prior to that ran the Brooklyn and Queens markets for Cushman & Wakefield since 2015.
After starting her career with Edison Properties, Castro became vice president of sales & marketing at Lawrence/ Tensator Full-time, an industrial manufacturing firm, and later vice president of sales and marketing at First Empire Securities, Inc
A graduate of NYU Stern School of Business, Castro also has her Series 63 and Series 24 securities certifications from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Castro is currently president of the New York chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW).
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Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has appointed Paula Roy Carethers to serve as Director of Real Estate for the Archdiocese of New York.
Carethers, founder of Unit 3 Planning + Advising, has had a 20-year career spanning the public, private, and non-profit sectors in advancing ambitious, mixed-used and mixed-income projects.
She succeeds David Brown, who has served the archdiocese as Director of Real Estate since 1989.
Carethers most recently led the master planning for Ford’s restoration of Michigan Central Station, and served as the liaison to public partners and key stakeholders.
In her previous role, she was the Executive Vice President for Real Estate at the New York City Housing Development Corporation.
As part of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, she provided oversight of the 22-acre Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park mixed-use development in Brooklyn, NY, led the Governor’s repositioning of New York State’s Mitchell Lama portfolio, and served as the President of the Queens West Development Corporation.
Carethers also managed pre-development activities for CPC Resources, successfully gaining public approvals for the 2.8 million square feet redevelopment of the historic Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
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Savills announced that Geoffrey Newman is returning to the firm as executive managing director.
Newman, who was at Savills from 2001-08, comes back after nine years at brokerage firm Newmark where he ws a key member of the firm’s tenant representation group responsible for transactions totaling more than 2,000,000 square feet at a combined value of $1,300,000,000.
Newman specializes across several facets of the commercial real estate business, mainly brokerage, but he also has experience advising non-profits and religious organizations on ground-up development, air rights and construction management.
While at Newmark, he was the recipient of the Real Estate Board of New York’s prestigious Most Ingenious Deal of the Year award in 2018 and was the runner-up in 2015.
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Camber Property Group announced that Karen Hu has joined the firm as its new Executive Vice President and Head of Development.
Hu brings nearly two decades of experience in real estate development spanning both the public and private sectors. Most recently, she was a principal at The Hudson Companies where she focused on both affordable and market rate housing including the One Clinton project, a $470 million, 38-story project that redeveloped the Brooklyn Heights Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library system into a 134-unit market-rate condominium and a state of the art library.
Hu got her start in real estate at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) as a City Planner in the agency’s Bronx Planning Unit. She later worked at Phipps Houses as a development project manager on new construction multi- family deals in both the South Bronx and Harlem.
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RXR Realty has hired Eric A. Clement as SVP & Fund Manager, Social Impact and Sustainability Investments.
Prior to RXR, Clement was senior managing director and head of the Strategic Investments Group at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), where he oversaw the negotiation of tax incentives, taxable/tax-exempt debt issuances, New Markets Tax Credit investments, in addition to a portfolio of debt & equity funds.
Throughout his career, he led opportunities across multiple industries and product groups while working as a partner at Blue Frontier Group, an emerging markets private equity firm, SGI Global Holdings, Ltd., and various executive and management-level positions at Accenture plc, Citigroup and JPMorgan.
Clement received his MBA from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford with specializations in Finance & Strategy and is currently an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School. He also received his undergraduate degree in History with a minor in Writing from Lehigh University.
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Colliers has appointed real estate veterans, Douglas Bansbach and Linda Hill, as executive managing director and senior managing director, respectively.
The two bring to Colliers more than 45 years of combined experience.
The Bansbach-Hill team joins Colliers from Cushman & Wakefield. Over the course of their careers, they have completed several notable transactions including securing a 450,000 s/f lease to IDI Logistics, 40 acre land lease for Arizona Beverage to build a 600,000 SF bottling plant, and the sale of the former Ocean Spray facility in Bordentown, NJ.
Bansbach began his career in real estate in 1988, at Jacobson, Goldfarb & Tanzman and also served as senior vice president at Colliers Houston & Co. from 2006 to 2010. Prior to his real estate career, he served as vice president at Citibank.
Hill most recently served at Cushman & Wakefield as a Director and, before that, held the title of vice president at Lee & Associates, New Jersey. She began her real estate career as an associate at Coldwell Banker Commercial in 2001.
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Ashcroft Capital announced the addition of Traci Wilhem as director of asset management.
Wilhelm joins the firm from RXR Realty, where she served as senior vice president of multifamily operations and asset management, managing a $2.7 billion portfolio of properties in the Northeast. At Ashcroft, she will oversee all of the asset management functions across the company’s entire portfolio.
Earlier in her career, Wilhelm was director of multifamily asset management at CBRE Global Investors, where she managed a $1.2 billion portfolio of Class A and value-add assets across the country. Before that, she served as director of asset management at JPI and as asset manager at Gables Residential.
Wilhelm also practiced real estate transaction law for three years in Denver.
She has a Bachelor of Arts from University of Colorado Boulder, a Juris Doctorate from Washington and Lee School of Law and a Master of Science in Real Estate Finance and Construction Management from the University of Denver.
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Berkadia has hired Chuck Lee as senior managing director Capital Markets to lead further growth of Berkadia Commercial Mortgage LLC’s capital markets capabilities.
Lee brings more than 25 years of commercial real estate experience, most recently as Head of U.S. CRE Securitization and Warehouse Finance at Credit Suisse.
Hired in 2014, Lee was one of the key players in establishing Credit Suisse’s new CRE Capital Markets platform, in addition to recently serving as the President and Chairman of the CRE debt industry’s primary trade group, the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council.
He spent the majority of his career at JPMorgan in a variety of senior securitization, structuring, advisory and lending capacities, as well as some time at Deutsche Bank between 2007 and 2010, where among other responsibilities, he served as an advisor to the FDIC and assisted in the launch of the Freddie Mac K-series CME program.
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Savills has boosted its Workplace Practice Group with industry experts Marty Festenstein and Surabhi Raman as senior managing directors and Tonya Williams as managing director.
Marty Festenstein brings over 25 years of design experience, joining the firm from Nelson Worldwide, where he served as principal and chair of the Legal Workplace Practice.
His work has been recognized by the Chicago Building Congress, International Interior Design Association, and numerous architecture, design, and legal publications. Festenstein will be based in Chicago and partner with the Savills North America Legal Tenant Practice Group to offer workplace and facilities solutions for major law firms across the country in his new role.
Surabhi Raman has managed projects and strategic workplace initiatives around the globe and brings more than 20 years of experience to Savills.
With a background in architecture and technology, Raman has advised clients across the professional services and technology sectors, including Bank of America, Amazon, United Healthcare, Thomson Reuters, GSK, and Deutsche Bank.
Before Savills, Raman served as the projects sub-regional lead for the Google campus at CBRE and led JLL’s workplace consulting practice for Southeast Asia. Raman will work closely with the firm’s Technology Practice Group to advise key technology and platform-level clients.
Tonya Williams has over a decade of experience in corporate office design and joins Savills from CBRE. Previously, she was the global lead advisor on the firm’s ExxonMobil account.
Williams has also held lead workplace designer and project management roles within Occidental Petroleum’s global real estate and facilities team.
She developed workplace strategies and programming for multiple locations, including the organization’s chemical and oil and gas headquarters.
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essensys has appointed Arthur Mirante III as Head of Strategic Partnerships.
Mirante brings 25 years of experience in the investment banking industry, with a focus on real estate securities.
Most recently, he served in real estate and project development for Lightower Capital. Before that, he worked in the REIT sector as an analyst on portfolio analysis and modeling across property types for Forum Securities and posted record REIT sales revenue as a director with KeyBanc. Earlier in his career, he was a vice president with both Merrill and JPMorgan in their institutional equity division.
Prior to his career in finance, Mirante worked in real estate development for Lincoln Property Company.
His father, Arthur J. Mirante II, served as president and CEO of Cushman and Wakefield for over 23 years and is now the principal and chairman of the Tri-State region for Avison Young.
Mirante holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in Business Administration from Boston University.
He serves as a special police officer for the Village of Garden City.
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EP Inspections and Commissioning (EPIC) announced the addition of Molly Glenn to its team as its Director of Special Inspections.
Glenn will be responsible for visiting sites, documenting existing conditions and working closely with clients to ensure that projects are being performed in accordance with the appropriate regulations.
Glenn joins EPIC from Amaracon Testing & Inspections, where she served as the Senior Manager of Special Inspections. Before that she was Director of Special Inspections at AK Engineering.
Glenn distinguished herself in her field by earning several certifications from both the International Code Council and the American Concrete Institute.
In addition to her education as a Mechanical Engineer at the University of Rochester, she earned certification as a Commercial Mechanical Inspector, Structural Steel and Bolting Inspector, Structural Welding Inspector, Structural Masonry Inspector and Concrete Construction Inspector.
She is also a Grade I Concrete Field Testing Technician and recently passed the Professional Engineering examination in June.
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Jaros, Baum & Bolles announced that Stephen Keppler has joined its team as Director of Infrastructure.
Keppler joins the firm from Resource Energy, where he served as the company’s director of sustainability.
He brings over 30 years of experience in programmatic, technical and financial project development and will play a critical role in expanding and refining JB&B’s infrastructure practice.
Keppler has served as the LEED Program Director with the U.S. Green Building Council, Senior Consultant with ICF to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the Energy Star Building Label and Real Estate Management Ally Partnership programs, and as a fellow with the DOE/FEMP supporting the Better Buildings Data Center Challenge. For 12 years, he was the owner of a sustainability/energy modeling/commissioning consulting firm.
Keppler holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from New England College, is a LEED Accredited Professional, an AEE Certified Building Commissioning Professional.
