Marcus & Millichap has expanded the Board of Directors with the election of Collete English Dixon. She will also serve as a member of the Board’s Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee.
Dixon currently serves as Executive Director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, Roosevelt University in Chicago. She previously held various key officer and management roles at PGIM Real Estate/Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI), which is a business unit of Prudential Financial.
In her role as Executive Director/Vice President of transactions from 1996 to 2016, she oversaw the sale of investment properties throughout the US. Prior to her role in dispositions, Dixon was responsible for sourcing wholly owned and joint venture real estate investment opportunities. Her experience also includes property development and asset management.
Dixon served as president of CREW Network, chair of the CREW Network Foundation, and president of CREW Chicago.
•••
Avison Young has hired Larry Zuckerman as principal in the firm’s New York City office.
He brings nearly 40 years of commercial real estate experience and leadership to the firm and specializes in delivering value and expertise to office tenants in New York and across the Tri-State area.
Zuckerman previously served as senior managing director at Newmark and, before that, was a senior vice president with Grubb & Ellis for nearly 20 years. He began his real estate career with Gronich and Company after graduating from Franklin & Marshall College with a BA in Business.
•••
Rudin Management Company announced that two senior executives have joined the company.
Christopher Flynn has been appointed Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Ray Houseknecht joins as Senior Vice President, Head of Multifamily.
Chris Flynn is responsible for all accounting operations, financial reporting, lender and JV partner compliance, audit and tax compliance, and treasury functions across the organization in his new role. He also serves on Rudin’s Executive Committee.
An industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience across the real estate sector, Flynn served as Chief Financial Officer at Atlas Capital Group, Vice President at Vornado Realty Trust and Manager at Ernst & Young.
He graduated from SUNY Binghamton with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and is a certified public accountant (CPA).
Ray Houseknecht is responsible for the operation of Rudin’s residential portfolio including leasing, marketing, facilities, design and construction. He comes to Rudin from WeLive by WeWork, where he was most recently the Global Head of Operations and Asset Management.
Prior to WeLive, Houseknecht spent eight years at AvalonBay Communities as a Senior Portfolio Director, where he managed the operations of 3,700 residential units, as well as the development and expansion of new assets throughout Long Island. Before AvalonBay, he spent three years in his own real estate consulting practice and five years at Heinlein Capital Ventures.
He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Loyola College in Maryland.
The announcement comes on the heels of five senior-level promotions at Rudin, including Samantha Rudin Earls, Michael Rudin and Neil Gupta to Executive Vice President, and Cassie Kulzer and Nick Martin as Senior Vice President. Rudin also recently appointed Andrew Migdon as Executive Vice President and as the company’s first-ever Chief Legal Officer.
•••
Colliers has hired Shawn Henry as managing director, Head of Single-Family Rental | U.S. Capital Markets.
An expert with more than 20 years of experience in the single-family rental (SFR) sector, Henry joins Colliers after building his own specialty SFR-focused business. Before that, he held senior leadership positions covering SFR with both A10 Capital and Capmark/GMAC.
He will lead Colliers’ single family practice as it advises a variety of institutional investors across the spectrum of transactions, including acquisitions, capital raises, dispositions and financings for large and mid-sized portfolios of SFRs across the country.
Henry is the latest appointment to Colliers’ Capital Markets platform, which has recently added Head of New York City Capital Markets Peter Nicoletti, Managing Director of Boston Investment Sales Frank Petz and New York Debt & Equity Finance Group Managing Director Jimmy Board.
•••
Abraham Bergman has assumed the positions of president and CEO of Eastern Union.
He had previously served as Eastern Union’s managing partner since co-founding the firm with Ira Zlotowitz in 2001.
Zlotowitz had served as the company’s president and CEO since its inception. He will now be pursuing other activities in the commercial real estate field.
Bergman has played an active and central role in shaping Eastern Union’s corporate strategy and structure. He has been a leader in sales and relationship-building across each of the company’s CRE sectors.
Bergman holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Touro College and a master’s degree in general business administration from Baruch College.
Eastern Union also announced that its two most productive brokers, Marc Tropp and Michael Muller, have been named to the company’s board. They each hold the title of senior managing director.
Muller has been the firm’s leading broker in the New York City market over the past 20 years. Tropp has been Eastern Union’s number-one broker in the Mid-Atlantic regional market for the last 16 years.
Moshe Maybloom, a 14-year veteran of the firm, has also been named to the company’s board and has assumed the position of senior managing director of operations.
•••
DH Property Holdings has hired architect Michael Bennett as director of development as the company looks to expand nationally.
Bennett, a former principal with Ware Malcomb, has designed more multi-story, urban-infill distribution centers than any other architect in the nation, including groundbreaking DHPH projects.
Bennett began his career as a designer at Ware Malcomb in 1997 after completing a University of Arizona architecture degree. He spent 24 years at the firm and served as head of the East Coast division.
He has deep experience with land-use and planning studies and with complicated zoning and infrastructure challenges.
•••
Walker & Dunlop has appointed P.J. McDevitt as Managing Director.
Focused on the affordable housing space, McDevitt will drive loan origination growth nationally to help address the country’s significant need for affordable housing.
Since 2018, McDevitt has been involved in the origination, underwriting, and closing of nearly $1 billion in affordable housing transactions.
He previously served as a director at Greystone and, before that, held various positions with PNC, where he contributed his expertise as a Production Management Representative and Production Assistant. McDevitt began his career in commercial real estate at Walker & Dunlop as a senior analyst.
•••
Duval & Stachenfeld announced that Kim Le and Christopher Gorman have been named co-chairs of the firm’s real estate practice group.
Le and Gorman both joined D&S as associates in 2004. In the 17 years since, they have each become highly sought-after attorneys, who have consistently leveraged their legal acumen and business savvy to craft creative solutions for their clients.
Over the course of their respective careers, each has served as legal counsel on billions of dollars of complex real estate transactions, including platform creation, portfolio acquisitions, multi-layered financings, and complex joint-venture equity partnerships.
•••
Greystone announced that Adam Lipkin has joined Greystone Capital Advisors as a Vice President.
He joins the capital solutions advisory group to leverage his capital markets knowledge and experience, including expertise in Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE), to help craft innovative debt and equity solutions for clients and originate large-loan agency and FHA opportunities within his extensive client network.
Lipkin has worked in the commercial real estate finance industry for nearly two decades, and joins Greystone from Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate LLC, a direct lender for C-PACE, where he served as Executive Director.
Prior to that role, he was a Vice President at Grandbridge Real Estate Capital. Earlier in his career, Lipkin worked in capital advisory with HFF and a subsequent boutique advisory team, Olympian Capital Group. Prior to his advisory work, Lipkin served at Ernst & Young in the New York Real Estate Advisory Group.
•••
TSCG announced the hiring of Craig Gambardella as a tenant and landlord broker. He will operate out of their Manhattan and White Plains offices.
An expert in the health care real estate sector, Gambardella will also spearhead a strategic initiative within TSCG to develop a proprietary suite of services aimed at real estate management in the healthcare sector.
Gambardella has been in the healthcare space for more than a decade and has worked with such healthcare organizations as Yale New Haven Health, Ontario Hospital Association, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Cedars Sinai Hospital. At JLL, he was part of their healthcare real estate practice.
•••
RIPCO Real Estate announced that Jordan Cohn has joined the firm as executive vice president.
Cohn previously served as a partner of SCG Retail, the urban division of The Shopping Center Group, where he was with the firm for nearly 20 years.
His primary focus was on tenant representation and has closed deals for recognized brands such as REI, Chick fil A, Home Depot, Bobby Flay, Charles Schwab, Crossroads Trading Company, Señor Frogs and many other local and national retailers, to name a few.
In addition to retail real estate work and accolades, Cohn has a career in the film industry and can be seen in movies such as The Westler, written by his brother in-law.
•••
Madison International Realty announced that Diana Shieh and Kim Adamek, managing directors of Portfolio and Asset Management, have been promoted to co-heads of Portfolio and Asset Management, overseeing assets under management in all sectors and regions across the US, UK and Europe.
Shieh and Adamek will oversee the firm‘s global portfolio and asset management team focused on its investment positions in real estate assets, including business plan execution, monitoring financial performance, driving relationships with Madison’s operating partners, and providing strategic recommendations seeking to enhance investment returns. They each joined the firm in 2014.
Shieh and Adamek each bring nearly two decades of experience to the role.
Prior to Shieh’s tenure at Madison, she held various positions in asset management and investments at Rockwood Capital and Shorenstein Properties. Shieh also serves as the Co-Chair of Madison’s ESG Committee. She is a graduate of Rutgers University.
Adamek held various positions in acquisitions at CBRE Global Investors and Unico Properties. She is a graduate of Northern Arizona University and holds an MBA from New York University.
•••
Katz & Associates announced that Russel Helbling has joined the firm as managing director in New York City.
Helbling will be working on tenant and landlord representation primarily in Long Island and the surrounding New York Metro region.
For the past 10 years, Helbling has worked in tenant and landlord representation at Sabre Real Estate. He has handled strategic roll-outs for brands including Starbucks, Wendy’s Hamburgers, Sherwin Williams and Dollar General and has been involved in numerous ground-up development leasing assignments in Long Island and the Outer Boroughs.
Prior to working at Sabre, Helbling was at Breslin Realty working on retail leasing, and at Massey Knakal, where he primarily focused on investment sales.
Helbling graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington with a Bachelor of Science in telecommunications.
•••
Blank Rome announce that Sonia Kaur Bain has joined the firm’s New York office as a partner in the Real Estate practice group,.
Bain represents developers, retail companies, hotel groups, landlords and tenants, and family offices across the country in the acquisition and development of numerous types of commercial real estate assets.
Prior to joining Blank Rome, Sonia was a real estate partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner.
In addition to her practice, Bain currently serves as the president of New York Women Executives in Real Estate (WX), where she has been a board member and officer for five years.
•••
Avison Young has hired Thomas Kaufman as principal to boost the firm’s business efforts in the Downtown Manhattan submarket.
He brings more than 30 years of experience in providing consulting and brokerage services to banks, partnerships, corporations and institutional owners.
He joins Avison Young from InterRelate Group, where he served as Chief Executive Officer. Before that, he spent seven years as an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield and, prior to that, he was with the New York office of CB Richard Ellis as a senior vice president.
Kaufman has broad experience representing both major commercial property owners and tenants. He provides consulting services for the not-for-profit community, including American Numismatic Societyand the Hetrick-Martin Institute,.
Kaufman will work closely with Todd Korren, principal in Avison Young’s New York City office, to grow the firm’s downtown platform through recruiting and new business development initiatives.
•••
Duval & Stachenfeld announced that Ilya Leyvi has been named co-chair of the firm’s real estate finance practice group.
Leyvi will helm the practice group alongside Tom O’Connor, who has chaired the real estate finance practice since he joined D&S in 2014.
Currently a partner at D&S, Leyvi first joined the firm as a summer associate before joining full-time as an associate in 2013.
He regularly represents lenders and borrowers on bridge loans, construction loans, mezzanine loans, and commercial mortgage-backed securities, as well as preferred equity investments. He has served as counsel on deals across all property types.
Leyvi graduated at the top of his class from Cornell Law School and received his B.B.A. from CUNY Baruch College – Zicklin School of Business.
•••
Cushman & Wakefield has hired Tim McNamara and Kevin Daly as senior director and director, respectively.
Based out of the firm’s Hartford office, they will cover New England, Westchester County and New York’s Hudson Valley to greater Albany.
McNamara has more than 34 years of industry experience and has been recognized as one of the top producing retail brokers in New England and New York. In addition to his leasing experience, he has facilitated the sale of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of retail properties.
McNamara holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Bryant University.
Daly has more than 20 years of industry experience working with a range of national retailers, selling in excess of $50 million of land and overseeing nearly $200 million of lease transactions throughout his career.
McNamara and Daly join the firm from SullivanHayes Companies Northeast, . Daly has a Bachelor of Arts in History from Providence College.
•••
JPMorgan Chase announced Michelle Herrick as Head of Real Estate Banking (REB).
Previously, Herrick served as the REB Central Region Market Manager, overseeing the Midwest, Mountain and Southeast markets. She led a team that helps clients with strategies and tools to maximize investment opportunities, manage operating costs, mitigate risk and manage assets for greater efficiency.
Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase in 2017, Herrick started her career at LaSalle Bank and remained there after Bank of America acquired the firm in 2007.
She held various roles within the commercial real estate banking business, covering a national book of public and private real estate sponsors.
Michelle received her bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance from Miami University and she earned an MBA from the University of Chicago.
•••
Due By the First has hired Matthew Murphy as Portfolio Manager responsible for underwriting new deals and managing current assets for the Long Island-based firm that offers short term bridge loans, permanent financing and commercial debt acquisitions.
Previously, Murphy worked as director of finance at ERG Commercial Real Estate.
Over his career, Murphy has overseen the origination of over $100 million of commercial and multifamily bridge loans in New York City.
He began his career as a commercial real estate broker and managed a team focused on CRE deals in the Bronx.
He is a 2009 graduate of SUNY Albany where he received a bachelor of science degree in physics.
•••
The Swig Company announced the following personnel changes:
Stephanie Kwong Ting has been appointed Executive Vice President – Director of Investments in charge of investments and will take charge of the company’s capital markets transaction activity. She succeeds Tomas Schoenberg who will retire later this year.
Ting joins the company from Morgan Stanley where she was an Executive Director.
Kairee Tann has been named Vice President of Innovation and Asset Management.
Tann, who joined The Swig Company in 2016 as a project manager responsible for 300 Lakeside in Oakland, was most recently VP of Asset Management.