WatermanCLARK, the new investment firm formed by Brookfield Property Partners chairman Ric Clark and former Tishman Speyer executive Tod Waterman, has hired industry veteran Jennifer McCool as Chief Operating Officer (COO).
McCool previously spent over 13 years with Related Companies, where she served in various leadership roles, most recently as executive vice president and chief legal officer where she was involved in numerous large-scale transformative developments and transactions and helped launch new strategic business platforms.
Prior to Related, she spent over six years at Schulte Roth and Zabel, LLP, one of New York’s most respected law firms.
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Tishman Speyer has hired Joseph F. Ritchie to serve as Managing Director of Business Development and Head of Diversity & Inclusion.
Ritchie has served in a variety of executive positions in real estate, government and economic development, including as founding CEO of the City of Newark’s economic development corporation under Mayor Cory Booker.
Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President for development at Brandywine Realty Trust. His other prior real estate experience includes executive roles at Trammell Crow Company, The Burks Companies, and Lomax Real Estate Partners.
In addition, he spent time as a consultant at Deloitte and helped create a program to support minority entrepreneurs in Cape Town, South Africa.
Ritchie earned his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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SJP Properties announced that Alexander Erdos has joined the company as Senior Vice President — Leasing and Marketing.
Erdos will work directly with SJP Properties Founder and CEO Steve Pozycki to oversee business development, leasing and marketing — focusing on expanding SJP’s entire portfolio.
Prior to joining SJP, Erdos served as vice president at CBRE in Midtown Manhattan, where he was an integral part of the Northeast Consulting team responsible for advising and representing a broad range of owners and occupiers in the office and life science sectors.
During his career, Erdos has represented numerous venture-backed occupiers and publicly traded companies, including Sony, Pfizer, Inc., and Nestlé.
During the earlier stage of his career at Eastern Consolidated, he built foundational experience in capital markets and investments sales.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School.
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Genesis Companies announced three new professionals have joined the Company.
Anthony Anderson has been appointed Chief Operating Officer; Basil Marshall has assumed the role of Project Manager, Residential Construction; and Malik Brown has joined Genesis as Development Associate.
Anthony Anderson joins Genesis from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) US Banking Group, where he led the Leasing and Finance Company practice. Anderson will focus on strategic initiatives, investor relations and compliance at Genesis. He will also be responsible for extending the firm’s financial resources, optimizing its financial structures and ensuring operational best practices
Basil Marshall joined the firm to lead its efforts to improve and optimize the physical plant of its residential buildings. He previously served as Project Manager for New York Residential Works.
Malik Brown was previously a development associate at Metro Futures LLC. In his new role, he will provide project management support across a variety of the firm’s vertical
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Lightstone is expanding its real estate debt platform Lightstone Capital with the hiring of Lance Wright as Managing Director, Head of Originations, Central Region.
The new Central Region office will be based in Dallas and cover the Southwest, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the U.S.
Dallas will be the third office for the New York City-based Lightstone Capital, following the opening of a West Coast office in Los Angeles in February.
Wright, a real estate finance industry veteran with more than three decades of experience, joins Lightstone Capital from ACORE Capital, where he served as a Managing Director in their Dallas office. Prior to that, he was a Regional Director at GE Capital Real Estate.
He has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance from SMU and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.
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Greystone announced that Romano Tio, Senior Managing Director, has joined the Commercial finance team led by Scott Chisholm, based in New York.
Tio will focus on large loan origination across an array of platforms while working to expand the firm’s lending activities to a broader scope of commercial asset classes.
With 30 years of CRE industry experience, Tio joins Greystone from Ackman-Ziff, where he was a senior managing director. Prior to Ackman-Ziff, Romano co-founded RM Capital Management and, before that, was co-founder of Distressed Commercial Mortgage Principal Investments at HCP Real Estate, an affiliate of multibillion-dollar hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners.
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Haven Capital announced the hiring of Hal Pohl as Head of West Coast Acquisitions.
Pohl will oversee Haven Capital’s deal origination activities as the firm expands its ground lease platform nationally.
He brings more than two decades of experience across the entirety of the deal cycle on a diversified range of asset types.
Pohl was previously a managing director at Wells Fargo, where he managed an origination team serving large-scale clients with expansive geographic portfolios.
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Signature Bank has announced several management appointments, promotions and transitions.
After 21 years of service, Mark Sigona, senior executive vice president and COO, announced his retirement, effective June 30, 2021.
Eric R. Howell, senior executive vice president-corporate and business development since 2013, will assume the COO role, including his current duties overseeing certain of the Bank’s national businesses and West Coast operations.
Howell has been with Signature Bank since its inception, during which time he held roles of increasing responsibility, including Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, after initially joining as Controller.
Peter Quinlan, executive vice president and treasurer, also announced his retirement after nearly two decades with the bank.
Kevin Hickey, senior vice president and chief risk officer for the past five years, will return to the Treasury Department as senior vice president-chief investment officer and treasurer.
Hickey, a Bank colleague since 2004, began his tenure as Associate Treasurer and assumed the additional title of Senior Vice President several years later. In total, he spent 12 years in the Bank’s Treasury Department.
Keisha Hutchinson has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, joining Signature Bank from KPMG where she was audit partner for five years.
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Vito Susca will move into the newly created post of EVP and Chief Administrative Officer, and assume various operational responsibilities. He was SVP and CFO from 2013-2021, after serving as SVP and Controller since he began his employment with the Bank in 2004.
Stephen Wyremski, Senior Vice President and Controller since joining the Bank in 2015, will be promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Catherine Donald-Grove, Senior Vice President and Director of Product Management Services, was promoted to Chief Products Officer, also a newly established position.
Dawn Juliano was named to the newly created position of Senior Vice President and Deputy Chief Lending Officer.
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Thomas Caliendo has joined RIPCO Real Estate as a broker, where he will develop the firm’s presence in the Queens borough, among other markets.
Caliendo has extensive experience working with key brands, including T-Mobile, First National Bank and Paris Baguette.
Prior to joining RIPCO, he was a director and senior broker at Winick Realty Group. Before that, he was an agent at Sabre Real Estate Group, where he guided local, national and multi-national clients in commercial real estate acquisitions, lease obligations, asset repositions and dispositions.
Caliendo earned his Master’s Degree in Financial Planning from Molloy College and his Bachelor’s Degree from SUNY Farmingdale, graduating with a double major in Business Administration and Professional Communications.
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Madison Realty Capital announced that seasoned real estate finance executive Urian Yap has joined the firm as chief financial officer.
Yap most recently served a senior vice president at The Blackstone Group where he led both the global loan operations team of Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies (BREDS), representing over $20 billion of gross assets, as well as the financial reporting team for Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc. (NYSE: BXMT).
Prior to joining Blackstone, Yap was the assistant controller at Colony Capital and, earlier in his career, held financial reporting positions in the real estate group of Morgan Stanley as well as roles in the corporate litigation advisory practices of Duff & Phelps and Ernst & Young.
Yap holds a BBA from Emory University with a concentration in Accounting. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst charterholder and an inactive Certified Public Accountant in the state of Georgia.
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Vornado Realty Trust announced the promotion of Jan LaChapelle to executive vice president – Head of Capital Markets.
LaChapelle joined Vornado in 2014 and was most recently senior vice president of Capital Markets.
Prior to joining Vornado, she was a member of Wells Fargo’s real estate banking group for ten years.
LaChapelle succeeds Mark Hudspeth who is leaving Vornado to become Head of U.S. Capital Markets at Blackstone Real Estate.
