People Property Place

This week I sat down with Kirsty Willman, CFO & COO of Rebalance Earth to ask Why Should Real Estate Investors Care About Nature?

Kirsty spent 22 years in private markets finance, most recently as COO of Real Estate at Federated Hermes. She walked away from that to back a £100 billion market that nobody has properly built yet.

Her view is straightforward. Flood risk is becoming impossible to insure away. Coastal erosion is outpacing the defences built to stop it. Urban temperatures are rising fast enough to change where people actually want to be. Most real estate portfolios have not started pricing any of this.

We got into how Rebalance Earth finances nature restoration projects, how the returns work through service contracts, carbon credits and biodiversity net gain, and what 4 million oysters off the coast of Norfolk have to do with coastal property and offshore wind.

This is not a vanilla ESG conversation; it is a conversation about portfolio risk and why you really should care about nature before it is to late.

Drop your thoughts in the comments.

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

Key Topics

✅ Why Nature Loss Is Now a Real Estate Balance Sheet Risk Not an ESG Talking Point

✅ How Rebalance Earth Underwrites Nature Restoration Like Any Other Private Markets Asset

✅ Flood Risk, Coastal Erosion and Urban Heat. The Risks Most Portfolios Have Not Priced

✅ Why Kirsty Left a Senior COO Role to Back a £100 Billion Market Nobody Has Built Yet

✅ The Revenue Model Behind Nature Based Investing and Why It Works for Institutional Capital

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with Lord Walker, Executive Chair of Iceland Food Group, Founder and Chairman of Bywater, and the Prime Minister's Cost of Living Champion.

Richard started his property career on the JLL graduate scheme in the West End before moving to Warsaw to build a value-add business across Eastern Europe. After returning to the UK, Bywater spent several years searching for its niche before the former Costa Roastery site in Lambeth became Paradise - one of the UK's largest CLT mass timber office buildings. That project helped bring in Sumitomo Forestry, a 400-year-old Japanese partner, and gave Bywater the platform to scale into timber-led workspaces and living assets.

In this conversation, Richard talks about patient capital, building through the GFC, why "long term greedy" shapes both Bywater and Iceland, how purpose and profit can sit together, and what his new role in the House of Lords means for his work around the cost of living.

We also discuss Iceland's growth into a £4.5bn family-owned retailer, his year working on the shop floor, climbing Everest in 2023, and why resilience has been central to every stage of his career.

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Key Topics Covered in This Episode

✅ From The West End To Warsaw Lessons from the JLL grad scheme and building in Eastern Europe through the GFC.

✅ Paradise, Vauxhall & The Mass Timber Thesis How the CLT office in Vauxhall became the deal that defined Bywater.

✅ Sumitomo And The Power Of Patient Capital Why a 400-year-old Japanese partner is rewriting how Bywater thinks about cycles and product.

✅ Scaling Beyond Offices £1 billion GDV by year end, a new pension-fund vehicle, and the move into living.

✅ Long Term Greedy Why purpose-led businesses last longer and why Gen Z is voting with their feet.

[This episode was recorded on 16th April 2026]

If you have thoughts or questions about this episode, drop them in the comments. I'd love to hear your take.

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with James Halstead, Managing Director and BlackRock's Chief Investment Officer for European Value Add Real Estate, for a conversation that opens with one of the most direct and challenging questions the show has ever asked. Is real estate facing an existential crisis?

James does not flinch. He gives a forensically honest answer about where real estate equity sits today relative to private credit and infrastructure, why the sector has underperformed on a risk adjusted basis over the last decade, and what that means for how smart managers need to construct portfolios going forward. It is the kind of candour that is rare from someone at his level.

His own career is a fascinating study in patience, reinvention and strategic opportunism. Starting as a lawyer at BLP, a chance six month secondment to MGP during the financial crisis became the fork in the road that changed everything. What followed was a decade of deliberate stepping stones, going sideways and sometimes backwards, learning debt, development, asset management and acquisitions from the coalface up, until the breadth of that foundation became the very thing that set him apart.

We explore how Brexit, far from derailing his career, became the catalyst for building businesses in Ireland and Spain and ultimately broadening the BlackRock European platform in ways that would not have happened otherwise. James is candid about the role of serendipity versus strategy in how careers actually develop, and why the difference matters less than people think.

The conversation also tackles the talent gap that keeps him up at night. What happens to ambitious professionals in their early thirties when their managers stop investing in their development, and why the industry is quietly producing a generation of people who have plateaued without knowing it.

And of course, I asked James the big question:

Who are the People, what Property, and which Place would you invest in if you had £500 million to deploy?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take.

Key Topics

✅ Is Real Estate Facing an Existential Crisis in Private Markets?

✅ Why Real Estate Equity Has Underperformed and What Needs to Change

✅ From Lawyer to BlackRock CIO. The Stepping Stone Career Nobody Planned

✅ How Brexit Became the Catalyst for Building Across Europe

✅ The Talent Development Gap That Is Quietly Damaging the Industry

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with Rishi Bhuchar, CEO of CBRE UK and Ireland, for a conversation that is as much about who he is as a person as it is about what he has built across one of the most decorated careers in real estate investment banking.

Rishi's story starts in a way that most people in this industry would not expect. Parents who arrived from India in the 1960s with nothing, a childhood where money was scarce and fitting in was hard, and a career that began not with a burning ambition for real estate but with a scramble for a summer placement and a salary that felt like life changing money.

What followed was three decades of building, leaving, returning and building again across Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Ernst & Young, MGPA and Jefferies. Along the way he led the $65 billion Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield deal, the largest real estate transaction ever done in Europe, took Jefferies from unranked to number one in UK real estate M&A in five years, and quietly funded schools in India, yoga classes for pensioners and homeless people in London, all without telling anyone.

We discuss what it actually felt like to walk into CBRE not knowing a single one of the 3,500 people in the business, why his wife predicted he would run a business long before he ever thought about it himself, and the leadership principles he has carried since his earliest days in banking when he learned how not to do things just as much as how to do them.

And of course, I asked Rishi the big question: Who are the People, what Property, and which Place would he invest in if he had £500 million to deploy?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take. Key Topics

✅ His Early Career, the Moves, the Lessons and Reflections

✅ The Mammoth $65 Billion Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Deal

✅ How Rishi Took Jefferies From Unranked to Number One in Five Years

✅ Why He Walked into CBRE Not Knowing a Single Person in the Business

✅ A Five-Point Leadership Philosophy: Clients, Margin, Data, Accountability, and Fun

✅ The 90% Stat About Fatherhood That Made Him Reassess Everything

✅ Receiving an MBE for Private Long-Term Support of Charities like Magic Breakfast

✅ Analysing the Current Market and Opportunities in Public Real Estate Securities

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week is different. I'm joined by my friend Harry Wentworth Stanley, Investment Director at BauMont Real Estate Capital, for what I believe is the most important conversation I've ever had on this podcast.

20 years ago, Harry lost his older brother James to suicide. James was 21, in his final year at Newcastle, sporty, academic, popular, with no history of mental illness. Following a routine operation he went into a suicidal crisis over two weeks, walked into A&E asking for help, and was sent away as a low priority patient. He took his own life shortly after.

Harry committed to doing something significant in James' memory every decade. Ten years ago he rowed the Atlantic, opening the first James' Place in Liverpool in 2018. Now, on the 20-year anniversary, 22 May 2026, he's taking on 'Journey For James': cycling, paddle boarding, and running 400+ miles from Newcastle to London via Liverpool and Birmingham. Eight days, four cities, each home to a James' Place Centre. The aim: raise over £100,000.

About James' Place

A charity delivering life saving therapy to men in suicidal crisis. Free, fast, delivered by qualified therapists in centres that feel like a home, not a hospital. Four UK centres, with a fifth opening next year. Over 5,000 men have been through the doors since 2018.

What We Covered

The challenge, James' story, how Harry's family dealt with the unimaginable loss, why they decided to become 'operators', why the James' Place model works, the male only focus, changing the vernacular around suicide, and the most important question: if you're worried about someone, ask them directly. Two construction workers in the UK take their own lives every working day. This matters not only for our industry, but for every single one of us.

How To Support

Donate: https://www.justgiving.com/page/journeyforjames £15 pays for the first conversation with a man in suicidal crisis to get him the help he needs, the first step in his recovery. £25 covers the cost of booking appointments for 10 men in suicidal crisis £50 provides an initial assessment for a man in suicidal crisis at a James' Place centre, within two working days of him seeking help. £110 covers the cost of a therapy session in the safe and welcoming environment of a James' Place centre. £250 delivers one outreach session at a company or in the community to help James' Place to reach more men in need. £850 funds one therapist for a week, meaning 20 men do not face their crises alone. £2,000 supports one man through James' Place's life-saving intervention, enabling him to dismantle his crisis and find hope for the future.

Do us a favour and share this conversation.

Ask the difficult question.

And if you want more info:

James' Place: https://jamesplace.org.uk

Harry's LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-wentworth-stanley-81b58b61/

James' Place LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/james-place-charity

Harry, you're a legend. I have no doubt James would be so proud of you.

Go get it!

Matt

This week, I sat down with Mark Russell, CIO and Head of Real Estate at Federated Hermes, for a conversation about what it really means to build a career on first principles, and why that philosophy is becoming more valuable in today's market than it has been in years.

Mark's route into real estate began with a week of work experience organised by his headmaster, driving around the southeast in a sports car looking at office buildings. He was 17. It is a story that says something important about how the industry finds its people, and more pointedly, about how many people it never finds at all.

What followed was a career built across some of the most formative environments in UK real estate. JLL in the nineties, Legal and General managing institutional mandates, and then Prestbury Holdings where working closely with Nick Leslau taught him a set of disciplines that have stayed with him ever since. It is better to be bored than bust. Know why you are doing what you are doing. And collect the rent.

We discuss his arrival at Federated Hermes, what he found when he got there, and the patient process of listening, questioning and recalibrating that any leader needs to go through before they can move an organisation forward. Mark is refreshingly honest about what that looks like in practice and why asking dumb questions is one of the most underrated tools a CIO has.

The conversation then turns to the Federated Hermes business itself. An integrated platform spanning development, asset management and operations, with MEPC, one of the UK's most storied development businesses, sitting at its centre. Mark makes a compelling case for why that combination is exactly what the market needs right now, and why 82% of the total return from real estate over the past 40 years has come from income rather than capital growth.

And of course, I asked Mark the big question:

Who are the People, what Property, and which Place would you invest in if you had £500 million to deploy?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take.

Key Topics

✅ Nick Leslau, Prestbury and the Discipline of Knowing When to Sell

✅ Why Property Management Is the Most Undervalued Part of the Industry

✅ How to Lead an Organisation Through Uncertainty Without Losing the Team

✅ The Case for Income Over Capital Growth in the Current Cycle

✅ Why Urban Regeneration and Brownfield Sites Are the Biggest Opportunity in UK Real Estate

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with Justin Hildebrandt, Senior Managing Director and Head of Europe at Affinius Capital, to explore a career that began on construction sites in Napa Valley and has taken him to the forefront of one of the most quietly formidable real estate platforms operating in Europe today.

Justin's path into real estate was shaped early. A father in construction, summers spent on job sites, and a year in Germany as a 16-year-old exchange student that he credits with permanently expanding his ambitions and ultimately pulling him back to Europe decades later. That move to London on the day of the Brexit vote, intended as a short term expat stint, is now approaching a decade.

We discuss the journey from USAA Real Estate, where Justin joined a 3 billion dollar business in 2011 and helped grow it to the 62 billion dollar platform it is today, and what that kind of growth actually requires in terms of creativity, discipline and the willingness to pivot into new strategies before the market catches up. Justin is candid about how the business got there and why AUM for its own sake was never the point.

The conversation unpacks each of Affinius Capital's European strategies in detail. The Mount Park logistics platform that started with a handful of transactions and became a wholly owned pan-European business. The data centre strategy in West London that took three years to get through planning and is now a 140 megawatt site. The living strategy built in partnership with Package Living. And a credit platform that has grown to around 20 billion dollars of AUM globally and is increasingly active in Europe at exactly the right point in the cycle.

Justin also shares a perspective on the European market that is genuinely unusual. Having sat on the global investment committee and seen both sides of the Atlantic in real time, he makes a striking observation about where Europe now sits relative to the US in the current recovery.

And of course, I asked Justin the big question:

Who are the People, what Property, and which Place would you invest in if you had £500 million to deploy?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take.

Key Topics

✅ From Napa Valley to a Decade in London. The Career That Followed Opportunity Wherever It Led

✅ Growing a Business From $3Bn to $62Bn. What It Actually Takes

✅ Mount Park, Data Centres, Living and Credit. Inside the Affinius Capital European Platform

✅ Why Europe May Be Leading the US for the First Time in Several Cycles

✅ AI, Heat Mapping and the Future of Smarter Real Estate Decision Making

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with Mark Bourgeois, Chief Executive of the Government Property Agency, for a conversation that bridges the worlds of private sector real estate and public sector purpose in a way that very few guests on this show ever could.

Mark's journey into real estate began not through a carefully planned career move but through a rugby sevens team at Donaldson's in Leeds. What followed was 25 years at the sharp end of the retail property industry, from running shopping centre teams at Capital Regional through to managing director roles at Hammerson, navigating two of the most turbulent periods the sector has ever seen. The Global Financial Crisis and the structural disruption of COVID taught him things about leadership under pressure that no business school could.

We discuss what it really feels like to lead a three billion pound business through a fight for survival, why staying close to your North Star matters more than ever when the ground is shifting beneath you, and how Mark's unusually broad grounding in finance shaped a career that consistently put him ahead of the curve in a sector famous for siloed thinking.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Mark explains what drew him from the private sector into public sector leadership, first at Liverpool City Council during one of the most challenging periods in its modern history, and then to the GPA. He is candid about what surprised him, what frustrated him, and what has genuinely inspired him about leading a 500 person organisation with a mandate to transform how government uses its estate across the UK.

Mark also shares his thinking on AI and why he believes every leader has a personal responsibility to get deep into the technology rather than delegating it to someone else in the organisation.

And of course, I asked Mark the big question:

Who are the People, what Property, and which Place would you invest in if you had £500 million to deploy?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take.

Key Topics

✅ From Rugby Sevens to Real Estate. The Unlikely Career Origin Story

✅ Leading Through the Global Financial Crisis and the Retail Collapse

✅ What the Public Sector Teaches You About Leadership That the Private Sector Cannot

✅ Inside the Government Property Agency. The Mission, the Portfolio and the Opportunity

✅ Why Every Leader Must Be a Digital Leader Right Now

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week, I sat down with James Jacobs, Managing Director and Global Head of Real Assets within the Private Capital Advisory team at Lazard, to explore the topic Real Asset Capital Formation: Who Wins?

In this conversation, James opens with a striking assessment of where the market actually stands. Fundraising volumes rose for the first time in four years in 2025, up 27% year on year. But the headline number masks a far more complex story. The market has never been more concentrated, more competitive or more unforgiving for managers who don't understand what investors are really looking for today.

James breaks down the three sectors attracting the lion's share of capital, why 1 in 3 dollars raised last year went into a single asset class, and why two sectors that dominated the industry when he started his career over 25 years ago are now considered niche. He also shares a clear and candid view on what distinguishes the managers who are winning capital from those who are not, and why the answer comes back to something surprisingly simple.

We then explore three structural trends that James believes will define the industry for years to come. The bifurcation of the market into mega funds and hyper-specialists, the rapid rise of secondaries and continuation vehicles as a portfolio management tool, and the blurring of the lines between real estate and infrastructure that is quietly redirecting billions of dollars across asset class boundaries.

🎯 Key Topics

✅ Global Fundraising in 2025. Recovery or Illusion?

✅ The Three Sectors Dominating Capital Formation Right Now

✅ Why the Squeezed Middle Is Getting Squeezed Even Further

✅ Secondaries and Continuation Vehicles. Powerful Tool or Manager Lifeline?

✅ The Convergence of Real Estate and Infrastructure and What It Means for Your Capital

The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers.

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This week on People Property Place, we do something different. Recorded live on the ground at Mipim in Cannes, this episode is the first of a new format: People Property Place Profiles. Where I walk and talk with some of the most outspoken and influential figures across the real assets industry. This week's conversation features Shaun Simons, co-founder of Compton, whose previous episode held the number one download spot on the show for nearly two years. Recorded in the middle of one of the industry's biggest annual gatherings, Shaun is characteristically unfiltered, direct and full of conviction. The conversation opens with Shaun making a bold call — he is more optimistic about the market right now than he has been since 2021. He breaks down the three specific forces he believes are converging to make 2026 a genuinely pivotal year for the London office market, and why the narrative of an industry circling the drain is finally starting to shift. Shaun also takes aim at one of commercial property's biggest blind spots — the industry's chronic failure to communicate with the people it is actually trying to do business with — and explains why he believes the big surveying firms have been getting this fundamentally wrong for years. The discussion turns to the role of personal brand and social media in building a real estate business, where Shaun shares a remarkable story about how four years of consistent LinkedIn activity resulted in a 40,000 sq ft instruction he never had to pitch for. He also reveals that he attributes somewhere between 25 and 30% of Compton's total revenue directly to social media. Finally Shaun shares his outlook for the year ahead, why he believes the stars are aligning for a genuine market recovery and what keeps him up at night as he leads a growing team of over 30 people. Drop your thoughts in the comments. We would love to hear your take. The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Rockbourne, recruiting leadership talent for real estate funds, owners, investors, and developers. 🔊 LIKE ➡ SHARE ➡ SUBSCRIBE 👉 http://peoplepropertyplace.com/