In 2018, Preston O’Connell joined Harvest Properties to lead the development team with a focus in office, mixed-use and multifamily projects. Preston specializes in the entitlement, curation and execution of large-scale, amenity rich mixed-use developments. Prior to Harvest, Preston was the Managing Director of Acquisitions and Head of Capital Markets at the Jay Paul Company in San Francisco. He co-managed the 5 million square foot acquisition and development pipeline and was also responsible for capitalizing the 8 million square foot portfolio of office, residential and retail properties. During his tenure at Jay Paul Company, Preston sourced and closed in-excess of $7 billion in debt and equity transactions and assisted with the negotiation of 7.3 million square feet of leasing with some of the world’s leading technology firms including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

Prior to joining Jay Paul, Preston worked for HFF’s structured finance platform in the San Francisco office raising debt/equity for office, multifamily, mixed‐use, retail and land transactions.

Preston received his BS from Cornell University in Applied Economics & Management. He is member of the Urban Land Institute and a Junior Board Member of City of Hope. In his free time, Preston enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife and young son. He is an avid skier, hunter, mountain biker plus an active member of his family’s wine operation in Napa Valley.

Brent Gaulke manages the company’s operations throughout California and is primarily responsible for business development, including sourcing new acquisitions for the various Gerding Edlen funds as well as establishing new joint venture relationships. Brent oversees all aspects of the acquisition/development process including due diligence, underwriting, contract negotiation, budget projections, capital structures, entitlements, design and implementation of the business plan. Prior to joining Gerding Edlen, Brent was a development analyst for Kemper Co. in Portland, Oregon.Brent earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and Masters degree in Architecture from the University of Oregon.

Gary S. McKitterick is a career real estate lawyer handling some of the largest and most complex real estate transactions in the country. Gary is a partner in the firm's Orange County office and is the former Vice-Chair of Allen Matkins Real Estate Practice Group. He handles real estate transactions of all sizes on a national basis representing large technology companies and office, retail, industrial, medical and residential developers and investors in a wide range of projects. Gary has been selected as one of the top real estate lawyers in America by Best Lawyers in America from 2003 to 2016.

Public and privately held companies rely on Gary to structure and negotiate complex transactions. For example, he was the lead lawyer for the acquisition of a skyscraper in Chicago that was, at the time, the largest single asset transaction in the history of Chicago. He also handled one of the largest land transactions in the history of California when Gary structured the sale of over 437,000 acres of land to the Bureau of Land Management and a private conservancy.

In the last two years alone, Gary has structured development, acquisition, disposition and investment deals valued at more than $4.8 billion. Gary is also involved in active construction projects with total project costs of more than $2.25 billion.

Gary is one of the leading transactional development and construction experts on the West Coast and has authored a chapter on construction management issues for Mathew Bender. He has lectured on construction matters for graduate schools at USC, UCLA and UCI and has written numerous articles covering such subjects as "Organizing and Planning a Project" and "The Role of Construction and Development Management."

Mr. Waters focuses on real estate investments.

Prior to StepStone, Mr. Waters was a Vice President at Clairvue Capital Partners, a real estate investment manager which integrated with StepStone to establish StepStone Real Estate. At Clairvue, Mr. Waters focused on sourcing, underwriting and managing investments in the U.S. and Europe. Prior to Clairvue, Mr. Waters was an Acquisitions Associate at Starwood Capital Group, a leading global private equity firm, where he focused on underwriting investments for the firm’s opportunity and debt funds. Before Starwood, Mr. Waters spent over two years as an Analyst in the Real Estate Investment Banking group at Banc of America Securities, working on a variety of M&A transactions.

Mr. Waters received his BBA from the University of Georgia.

Alexa Mizrahi serves as Director of Loan Origination for Lone Oak Fund, LLC. She graduated with Provost’s Honors from the University of California, San Diego in 2008, earning a Bachelor of Science in Microeconomics & Mathematics. Since joining Lone Oak Fund’s Loan Origination Department in 2009, Alexa has underwritten thousands of commercial real estate transactions and has closed more than $500 million in bridge loans. Alexa originates short term financing up to $30 million for California investment properties. She is a board member for the Los Angeles Mortgage Association, has spoken on numerous panels for organizations such as RealShare, IMN, and Bisnow, and has been published in several periodicals, including the Los Angeles Business Journal, Scotsman Guide, and GlobeSt.

Bryan has over 20 years of experience underwriting, structuring, negotiating and closing institutional-quality commercial real estate transactions. He has been directly responsible for the acquisition and development of more than $4B in office, industrial, apartment and retail projects at Realty Mogul, BlackRock, RREEF/Deutsche Bank, Hines and Archon Financial.

Rich Brand is the firm’s San Francisco Managing Partner and head of the Sports practice group. He focuses on sports law, real estate and corporate transactions, e-commerce, hospitality and leisure, and partnership and corporate law.

Rich is recognized as a leading sports attorney by Chambers USA and Legal 500 and as a leading real estate attorney by Best Lawyers. As noted by Chambers USA, “he is highly regarded for his expertise in representing both sellers and purchasers of sports teams” and “he brings tons of experience, and good business sense to the deal table.”

Rich speaks extensively on many aspects of sports, real estate and hospitality law at major industry conferences. He is frequently featured on the Yes Network’s Forbes SportsMoney sports talk show and has appeared on CNN, Fox Sports and other national video/television/radio programs. Rich is also an adjunct professor at Stanford Law School and UC Berkeley School of Law, where he leads seminars on sports law transactions. Rich regularly guest lectures at prominent undergraduate and graduate Sports Administration programs.