Christopher Merrill shares the strategy that scaled Harrison Street to $109 billion in assets under management.

Christopher Merrill, co-founder and global CEO of Harrison Street Asset Management, joins Nancy Lashine to discuss building one of the world’s largest alternative asset investment firms. 

Since founding Harrison Street in 2005, Chris has helped grow the firm to $109 billion in assets under management (AUM) across real estate, infrastructure and private credit.

Chris traces the firm’s strategy back to his early experience investing in central Europe, where he learned the value of pursuing fragmented markets and building strong teams. That experience shaped a principle that continues to guide Harrison Street’s relationships: 

[00:06:38] “If you get alignment of interest right, it works.”

Chris shares Harrison Street’s early focus on student housing, senior housing, medical office and self-storage, and how local operating partnerships have helped the firm build scale in these sectors. 

Chris also explains why deeper relationships with universities and health systems are creating new opportunities across real estate and infrastructure.

As more capital enters alternative real estate, experience becomes increasingly important to identifying risk.

[00:31:23] “No one likes to talk about their mistakes. I do. I try and bring them up a lot of times with investors and say "We've made mistakes in these sectors, and I think those scars are making us stronger.”

Across each stage of Harrison Street’s growth, a truth has emerged: scale creates the most value when it strengthens alignment, creates experts and preserves investment discipline. 

Resources

Christopher Merrill | LinkedIn

Harrison Street | Website

Katie Grissom of Nuveen discusses the retail resurgence and how retailer relationships shape investment decisions.

Katie Grissom, Nuveen’s Global Head of Retail, joins Nancy Lashine to discuss the evolution of institutional retail investing. Katie oversees more than $20 billion in retail assets across the U.S., Europe and Asia, and retailer relationships sit at the center of every investment decision at Nuveen. 

She explains how direct conversations with tenants influence underwriting, market selection and long-term portfolio construction, giving the firm insight that extends beyond traditional market data.

[00:18:14] “The retailer is the most important piece of what we do. And having those relationships gives us an unfair advantage.”

Partnership and deal structure are incredibly important. Katie shares why convenience-oriented retail continues to outperform, how demographic trends differ across global markets and why investors should look beyond headline returns when evaluating retail opportunities. 

[00:41:50] “The risk for the retail space is that it is so localized and it’s so granular that you've got to understand where all the risks are.”

Katie’s perspective combines the operational knowledge of how retailers think with the discipline of institutional investing. Listen for what’s next in the retail investment space.

Resources

Katie Grissom | LinkedIn

Nuveen Real Estate | Website

Kensington Vanguard’s Michelle Kleger shares how relationships, consistency and follow-through fuel successful careers in real estate.

Michelle Kleger is an expert relationship-builder.

She joins Nancy Lashine in this episode to share her unconventional path from hospitality into real estate and practical advice on mentorship, follow-up and building a long-term career.

Michelle works in business development, where she brings in clients and shepherds their deals through closing. In the title industry, you can’t compete on price because it’s state-regulated. So, Michelle has built a franchise on relationships and trust.

She did it by spending years meeting people over breakfast, lunch and drinks with one goal: getting to know them. 

[00:07:35] “I was talking about the business probably zero. I was developing relationships with people.”

Michelle’s love of people has helped her develop lasting relationships across the industry that continue to drive deals and open doors for her today.

The conversation also explores commercial title insurance, business development, networking systems and the habits that keep relationships active over time. Michelle also shares about founding Girl Gang CRE in 2017, a community of more than 3,500 women in commercial real estate.

[00:24:18] “The one thing I’ve learned from being at the same company for 10 years is the power of relationships.”

Michelle highlights how the strongest competitive advantages in commercial real estate are the relationships you build and the value you create before anyone asks for it.

Links

Michelle Kleger | LinkedIn

Kensington Vanguard National Land Services | Website

Girl Gang CRE | Website

Park Madison’s executive committee revisits its 2026 predictions and examines the trends shaping real estate for the rest of the year.

Park Madison’s executive committee, Rob Kohn, Carrie Coulson, Jack Koch, Brian Di Salvo and John Sweeney, joins Nancy Lashine for a mid-year assessment of the firm's 2026 Outlook. The group examines which themes have played out as expected, where market conditions have shifted and what investors should watch during the second half of 2026.

The discussion covers interest rates, fundraising, transaction volumes and the continued importance of distributions as institutional investors gradually return to the market. 

[00:12:43, Carrie] “There’s a lot more scrutiny on how managers are actually creating value. . . . not just ‘Here’s my track record, here are my returns.’”

That scrutiny extends to different asset classes as well. The team talks about why niche operating strategies continue to attract capital, how data centers are navigating growing pushback and why industrial assets with access to power are becoming increasingly valuable.

They also question how immune the real estate industry is to developments in AI, especially given that people will always need a place to live, work and play.

[00:17:50, Jack] “I do think just generally as an asset class, there is some protection given that we’re humans and we always physically need those three things.”

The conversation reinforces that patient capital and operational expertise continue to separate durable investment strategies from opportunistic ones.

Resources

Park Madison Partners' website

2026 Outlook report

Brendan Wallace discusses how AI is reshaping real estate, venture capital and the future of PropTech.

Brendan Wallace joins Nancy Lashine to discuss how generative and agentic AI are fundamentally changing the real estate industry for investors, operators and PropTech companies. 

The conversation explores why traditional “point solution” software is no longer enough for real estate firms trying to stay competitive. 

Brendan explains that companies now must integrate AI directly into their operations and decision-making infrastructure rather than treating technology as a separate IT support function.

[00:14:18] “If you still conceptualize your business that way, as we have leasing and development and reporting and then tech over here, you've fully lost the plot because what matters to truly capture the value of generative agent AI is you can't think of it as technology. You have to think of it as business.”

Brendan also discusses how AI is reshaping venture investing itself, compressing competitive advantages and increasing the concentration of returns among a small number of breakout companies. 

He argues that firms that are hesitant to adapt will fall behind quickly as the industry undergoes a major transformation.

[00:50:30] “Doing nothing around generative and agentic AI, not having a strategy, is an existential mistake at this point.”

The episode also covers climate investing, global innovation ecosystems and why Brendan believes the next five years will bring more change to real estate management than the previous two decades combined.

Links

Brendan Wallace | LinkedIn

Fifth Wall’s website

Brian Feldman, Compass Datacenters’ Vice President of Development, discusses data center development, power procurement, and the future of digital infrastructure.

Brian shares how unexpected opportunities early in his career led him to work with data centers. After graduating from Columbia’s business school, he joined Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) long-range planning team. At AWS, Brian was responsible for buying land for data centers and then procuring the power contract to energize it. 

He learned that data center location primarily depends on what problem the business is trying to solve. Brian points out that use and sales tax incentives and varying data center governance laws across the U.S. play a key role in site selection, too.

[00:15:06] “Data centers like to be next to other data centers [because] . . . [they] are all about interrelational databases and interrelational compute. . . . [T]hat means they can talk to each other almost instantaneously and really almost act like one greater facility.”

Brian shares how much data centers permanently boost local economies. They employ thousands of people during construction—people who live, eat and spend money in the community.

[00:43:40] “The construction cycle just continues. They're temporary jobs, but what people don't often realize is the level of permanence because these buildings do require constant upgrade and retrofit. And that's one, baked into the economics, and two, based [on] the lease terms.”

While the data center boom eventually will slow down, Brian emphasizes that the industry’s fundamental drive is society’s demand for computational power. And things like phone use and the need to interpret data aren’t going anywhere soon.

Links

Brian Feldman | LinkedIn

Compass Datacenters’ website

Daniel McGill of Joby Aviation shares how electric air transit and vertiports could reshape real estate value and development.

Daniel McGill of Joby Aviation joins Nancy Lashine to explore how electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft could reshape the built environment. 

With a background spanning Hines, Apple and institutional real estate, Daniel brings a practical lens to what it takes to introduce entirely new vertiport infrastructure into existing cities.

[00:16:43] “Literally the way you pick up your phone to call an Uber Black to get to the airport or an event, now there's an option to pick up an aircraft to fly you to said destination.”

He explains how landing pads on rooftops and underutilized spaces could become a powerful differentiator for assets, particularly as landlords look for new ways to drive demand and increase value.

Daniel outlines how this technology could expand where people choose to live and work, unlocking new geographies by dramatically reducing commute times. He emphasizes that adoption will take time and intentionality, pointing to Waymo’s rollout of its self-driving cars as an example to follow.

[00:31:30] “It requires patience. . . . We need to be early and often engaging with the community.”

Daniel highlights how forward-thinking real estate owners can position themselves at the forefront of a new mobility paradigm. He goes further than predicting the future of transportation and real estate by giving a glimpse into what is already on the cutting edge.

Links

Daniel McGill | LinkedIn

Joby Aviation | Website

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge and SALT, speaks on resilience, manager selection and what tokenization could mean for real estate.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge and SALT, reflects on the early lessons in resilience he learned from his parents. They worked as a makeup artist and a laborer and instilled in him a strong work ethic and a love of people.

He shares that his high school guidance counselor had a significant influence on him, too. Without his encouragement, Anthony wouldn’t have gone to Tufts and might not be where he is today.

[00:10:36] “You need people to help you. . . . You gotta go through your rite of passage and you don't have to be embarrassed about it.”

Anthony shares how his career has evolved and how he learned from his failures as well as successes. When COVID lasted longer than expected, Anthony stuck to playing the long game.

[00:16:02] “Everybody's a long-term investor until they have short-term losses. . . . We made a decision, which turned out to be one of the better decisions actually: we pivoted the business into digital assets and started buying bitcoin.”

Anthony is full of knowledge and experience. He speaks about stagflation, the possibility of AI productivity lowering interest rates and the factors at play in foreign investors’ willingness to invest in America.

Links

Anthony Scaramucci | LinkedIn

SkyBridge Capital’s website

SALT’s website

Sonny Kalsi, BGO’s Co-CEO and SLC Management’s President and CEO, discusses his real estate investment philosophy, building relationships and the biggest challenge of his career.

Sonny shares pivotal moments following his 2009 departure from Morgan Stanley that enabled him to build and scale GreenOak.

[00:11:00] “Honestly, my friends and my colleagues from Morgan Stanley rallying to me, my friends and wife came rallying to me . . . that helped out a lot. . . . Resilience is super important.”

He explains how that period reshaped both his leadership approach and investment strategy, driving a focus on simplicity, alignment and long-term relationships. As the industry evolves, Sonny emphasizes that success increasingly depends on execution at the asset level and having the right operating capabilities in place.

[00:31:44] “You got to make money the old fashioned way, which is you got to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work on the asset.”

Sonny’s insights on rethinking platform scale outline how firms can position themselves to compete in a higher-rate, more operationally demanding environment.

Links

Sonny Kalsi | LinkedIn

BGO’s website

SLC Management’s website

Laurent Grill, JLL Spark’s Partner and Managing Member, shares how founder experience shapes venture investing and where AI is transforming real estate.

Laurent Grill, JLL Spark’s Partner and Managing Member, joins Nancy Lashine to explore how a founder-first mindset is shaping venture capital in real estate technology. 

Laurent is unique in the proptech space. He’s been a founder multiple times — he even did a stint on Shark Tank — and now deploys capital into early-stage proptech companies to transform the way the built environment works.

He explains that in competitive markets, success often comes down to differentiation at the founder level.

[00:32:52] “When you're sitting down in front of a founder, sometimes you just have to ask the question of like, why you? Why you, why your team? What is different about your business and you personally that's actually gonna give you a chance of success in this market?”

That perspective carries into JLL Spark’s venture capital strategy: real-world industry pain points and measurable ROI guide investments. Laurent also reflects on the evolution of proptech, the rise of AI as core infrastructure, and what an “AI-native” building could look like.

[00:55:32] “AI is . . . not a product, it's a core infrastructure. . . . This is now the fundamental infrastructure of what technology looks like.” 

From operational efficiency to construction innovation, Laurent outlines what it means to put people before the product, where technology is reshaping the built environment and where the investment opportunities are.

Links

Laurent Grill | LinkedIn

JLL Spark’s website