Instructors and Guest Speakers
Steven H. Ott Crosland Professor of Real Estate and Development
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC
Steven Ott holds the appointment of John Crosland, Sr. Distinguished Professor of Real Estate and Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is also the Director of the Center for Real Estate at UNC Charlotte.
At UNC Charlotte, Dr. Ott has developed and operates a real estate finance and development concentration at the MBA level. Steve’s academic research focuses on topics such as the financial analysis of real estate development decisions, applications of option pricing to real estate valuation, the economics of public policy and real estate, Real Estate Investment Trusts, mortgage loan pricing and mortgage-backed securities. His articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Management, Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.
He serves on the editorial boards of Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management, and is a board member of the Real Estate Research Institute. He has served as a consultant to many investment banking, real estate advisory and real estate development firms.
Karen Ward Co-founder & Managing Partner
CenterCap Group, LLC
New York, NY
Prior to forming The CenterCap Group, LLC, Ms. Ward joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a coverage officer in the Real Estate Gaming and Lodging group of the Investment Bank in 2004. She lead the multifamily / student housing coverage efforts and was responsible for coverage within the Central Region in order to build out the firm's investment banking efforts alongside the commercial bank. As a senior calling officer, Ms. Ward was in charge of origination, structuring, execution and related activities for public and private companies across all aspects of M&A, equity and debt advisory. She focused largely on middle market advisory providing senior leadership to the banking teams entrusted with deal execution across multiple real estate sectors including multifamily, student housing, office, healthcare, real estate services, storage, hospitality, unlisted REITs and specialty finance companies. She closed more than $28 billion of transactions including joint ventures, equity and debt capital raises, and buyside and sellside M&A assignments. While with the bank, she was on the advisory board of the Women's Banking Forum and was selected three consecutive years as a committee member of the firm's global associate review process.
Previously, Ms. Ward was a senior investment banker in the Mergers & Strategic Advisory group at Goldman Sachs where she was in charge of all aspects of deal execution for major general industrial, financial institution, healthcare and consumer products clients. Ms. Ward was selected to execute on the Goldman Sachs purchase of Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, an IDD Deal of the Year, and was nominated to teach M&A modeling to associates globally.
Previously, Ms. Ward held positions with Morgan Stanley and Andersen Consulting.
Ms. Ward holds a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University and an MBA in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She maintains her real estate salesperson and brokerage licenses in North Carolina.
June Yu
Co-founder & Managing Partner
CenterCap Group, LLC
New York, NY
Prior to forming The CenterCap Group, LLC, Ms. Yu was Co-Head of M&A and a Senior Managing Director with CB Richard Ellis Investors (CB Richard Ellis's $40 billion AUM investment management business). She joined CBREI in July 2007 to co-head the build out of the firm's M&A efforts. Ms. Yu was charged with providing global advisory expertise in sourcing, structuring and executing entity-level real estate transactions, joint ventures, and acquisitions or recapitalizations of undervalued or distressed real estate investment and development companies and portfolios. Her role was expanded to focus on capital markets activities for CB Richard Ellis Investors' discretionary funds globally. During her time with CBREI, Ms. Yu sourced over $150 billion of potential investments for the firm's capital sources and developed over 200 new relationships with third party capital providers. She also was actively involved in the firm's global portfolio review process. Ms. Yu was a member of CB Richard Ellis Investors' Global Leadership Team, which oversees execution of strategies and best practices, and was a member of various task forces.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Yu was a senior banker in the real estate investment banking groups at Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Securities where she provided mergers and acquisitions, strategic advisory, restructuring and capital markets transaction advice to public and private real estate companies. Ms. Yu also has advised public and private companies in raising private capital for direct real estate investment strategies. During her career, Ms. Yu has been directly involved with approximately $35 billion of advisory assignments and executed over $15 billion of common equity, preferred equity and debt offerings for public REITs and closed end funds.
Ms. Yu holds a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School.
Guest Speakers:
Mike Burrichter
Principal
CB Richard Ellis Investors
Los Angeles, California
Devin Chen
Executive Vice President
PIMCO
Newport Beach, CA
Josh Cleveland Partner
Clairvue Capital Partners
San Francisco, CA
Jim Clayton, Ph.D.
Vice President - Research
Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, LLC
Hartford, CT
Joel K. Mayer Managing Director, Head of Retail
Rockwood Capital, LLC
Los Angeles, CA
Tom Mullahey Managing Director
AEW Capital Management
Los Angeles, CA
Sanford Presant
Chair - Real Estate Fund Practice
Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Los Angeles, CA
Sean Reynolds
Partner
Alston & Bird LLP
Atlanta, GA
James Sattler Vice President
JP Morgan Chase
Los Angeles, CA