Rich Chien is a Senior Program Specialist with the San Francisco Department of the Environment (SF Environment) and currently manages all aspects of the city's PACE financing program (GreenFinanceSF), other clean energy financing initiatives, and is the program lead for BayREN’s commercial program efforts. Mr. Chien also actively supports a variety of district-scale sustainability programs, including the South of Market Ecodistrict, the Sustainable Chinatown project, and the San Francisco 2030 District. He was instrumental in creating the city’s commercial buildings benchmarking and audit ordinance, and helps to monitor and update implementation of the green building code for new construction. Prior to joining SF Environment, Rich worked as a city planner, and practiced architecture, construction project management, and sustainability consulting at a number of Bay Area firms.

Ms. Nemeth rejoined Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. to continue to manage the company's large entitlement efforts and growing community relations needs, after two years at UC Berkeley where she led the effort to create a 5.4 million square feet new campus hosting international academic and business partners focused on academic and research endeavors. Prior to joining, Terezia was Vice President of Development at Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. and at Catellus Development Corporation where she spent nearly 15 years leading the design, entitlement, construction and operation of over 5 million square feet of private commercial office and biotechnology laboratory space development at Mission Bay in San Francisco. She participated in design and implementation of key infrastructure including roads, utility systems and open space.

Sarah Sieloff is the Executive Director of the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR or "see clear"), the oldest and only non-profit in the United States solely dedicated to the reuse and revitalization of underutilized or contaminated land. Serving as a national platform for excellence in land reuse, CCLR organizes workshops, webinars, and provides one-on-one technical assistance on land recycling issues in low-capacity and low-income communities across the country, from California to Puerto Rico. Under Sarah's leadership, CCLR has grown substantially since 2015. Prior to joining CCLR, Sarah served as the Memphis Team Lead for the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, working with 25 federal agencies to bring resources and technical assistance to the City of Memphis. Sarah has a background in international development and is a Truman Scholar. She earned her Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and her BA from Eckerd College.

William (Bill) Montana is a Managing Director of Brown Gibbons Lang Real Estate Partners where he is the co-leader of the national Multifamily Real Estate Group with his business partner, Christopher Sackley. Mr. Montana is a seasoned veteran with 26 years of specializing exclusively in the development of acquisition and disposition strategies for owners and investors of multifamily properties. His depth of specialization and market knowledge enables him to provide a highly efficient and effective process, ultimately leading to certainty of execution, maximized returns and wealth preservation. During his career, William has sold over 34,000 apartments throughout the Midwest with well-known firms such as Cushman & Wakefield, Draper and Kramer and Grubb & Ellis.

Steve provides the strategic direction for Grosvenor Americas’ investment, development and financing activities. Steve O'Connell was appointed to the Grosvenor Americas Board in 2018 after joining in 2011. He became Chief Executive of Grosvenor Americas in 2019. Steve led Grosvenor’s Development team in San Francisco and successfully established its multifamily program there before being appointed Managing Director, Investment in 2015 where he oversaw Investment and Co-Investment activities in North America. He holds a B.Eng. degree from McGill University and an MBA from the UC Berkeley - Haas School of Business. Steve is an Executive Committee and Board member of UC Berkeley’s Fisher Center Policy Advisory Board, a member of the Bay Area Council Board of Directors and belongs to an Urban Land Institute (ULI) National Mixed-Use Development Council.

Amy Price is president of BentallGreenOak (BGO). In her role, Amy also co-heads the firm’s U.S. Investment Management business and oversees its Canadian Investment Management and Real Estate Services businesses. Amy is a member of the Management Committee, chairs the U.S. Investment Committee for the firm's core, core plus and separate account clients, and co-chairs the U.S. Management Committee. Amy also leads BGO’s equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives globally and chairs the firm’s EDI Leadership Council.

Prior to joining the firm in 2012, Amy was a managing director and head of real estate investing for the western U.S. at Morgan Stanley, where she was an Investment Committee member, and built the real estate investment management business in San Francisco. Amy also spent time in Morgan Stanley’s New York and Hong Kong offices.

Amy is a member of the Global Board of Directors of Urban Land Institute (ULI), a member of the Board of Directors and Chair Emeritus of NAREIM, and a member of the Board of Directors of AFIRE. She is also involved in philanthropic endeavors, as a member of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of San Francisco, the National Charity League with her daughter, and Service Corp with her son.

Amy holds an MBA with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University.

Ben is head of the West Coast regional office, primary responsibilities include development and implementation of investment strategy, oversight and coordination of the West Coast investment activities. Responsible for joint venture structuring and the origination of new investment opportunities for the firm’s West Coast regional office.

A name partner of the firm, Anton N. Natsis is Chair of Allen Matkins’ Real Estate Department and is one of the top real estate attorneys in the United States. His practice focuses on development, leasing, purchase and sale, and portfolio investment sales transactions involving office, retail, and industrial projects, as well as arbitrating numerous fair market value disputes, CAM disputes and other significant landlord/tenant disputes. He also has extensive experience in debt, equity, and joint venture workouts, and the purchase of distressed assets and distressed debt. Tony is continually sought out by some of the largest national land owners, such as J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Blackstone Real Estate, Brookfield Properties, HCP, Vornado Realty Trust, Regent Properties, The Irvine Company, Boston Properties, Equity Office Properties, Kilroy Realty, Inc., Beacon Capital Partners, MPG Office Trust, Kamehameha Schools (The Bishop Estate) and Westfield Corporation. He represents many governmental entities, including the LAUSD, State of California, and City of Anaheim. Tony is also frequently retained as counsel for major national office tenants, such as AT&T, Citicorp, the FDIC, AIG, The Walt Disney Company, and the Los Angeles Times.

A frequent lecturer and author, Tony is the chief consultant for the California Continuing Education of the Bar Commercial Leasing Series, the legal education reference book on leasing for California attorneys, is an adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School for a course covering commercial real estate transactions, and has spoken before such national real estate groups as ULI and BOMA. Tony is a founding board member of The Ziman Real Estate Center, which is governed under the joint auspices of the UCLA Anderson School of Business and the UCLA Law School.

In the past decade, Tony has closed commercial office leases exceeding 50 million square feet. He has worked on real estate purchase contracts with a total consideration of more than $30 billion and on development transactions with a total consideration in excess of $25 billion. Since 2006, Tony has represented clients in office building portfolio investment sales transactions involving over $75 billion of consideration.

One of Tony's most significant transactions is the largest real estate acquisition deal in the history of the United States. He provided extensive real estate services in connection with Blackstone Real Estate's purchase of Equity Office Properties Trust, at that point the largest owner of office space in the U.S. other than the Federal Government, for $43 billion. Subsequently, Blackstone contracted to sell over 50% of the properties it purchased with such sales closing in the first and second quarter of 2007. Tony assisted Blackstone in its acquisition due diligence related to EOP and the subsequent sales of the properties. The transactions related to this deal included Maguire Properties' purchase of Blackstone/EOP in Orange County for $2 billion, Irvine Company's purchase of Blackstone/EOP in San Diego for $1 billion, Morgan Stanley's purchase of Blackstone/EOP in San Francisco for $2.5 billion, and Beacon Capital Partners’ purchase of Blackstone/EOP Seattle for $6.3 billion.

Real estate professional with more than 15 years of experience in development, land planning, and project management. Experience includes planning and implementing the Transbay Redevelopment Project in Downtown San Francisco, which involved serving as the lead negotiator on a variety of complex real estate and public/private development transactions, including more than $400 million in land dispositions.

Jack Sylvan is founder and principal of SDG, LLC, a San Francisco-based investment, development and advisory company delivering exceptional value to investors, partners and clients on complex and innovative mixed-use development opportunities. Jack has 25+ years of real estate investment and development experience on transformational, multi-phase, extremely complex mixed-use real estate projects in the San Francisco Bay Area leading acquisition, entitlement, negotiation of complex transactional and public-private partnership agreements and development activities. The projects represent more than 16 million square feet of mixed-use, commercial office, life science/biotech, multifamily, retail, historic rehabilitation, arts and community space, and hundreds of acres of parks, streets and infrastructure.

Prior to forming SDG, Jack served as Senior Vice President of Development for Forest City Realty Trust and Brookfield Properties where he built and led the local development team responsible for all aspects of entitlement and development of three of San Francisco’s largest redevelopment projects -- Pier 70, 5M and Stonestown Galleria -- representing 8 million square feet of residential and commercial space. Prior to this, Jack spent 8 years in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office overseeing large public-private real estate development projects including leading the planning and negotiation process for the approximately 8 million-square-foot Treasure Island redevelopment project, where he successfully negotiated agreements with the private development partner, an affordable housing consortium, and the historic agreement with the U.S. Navy for the transfer of the property. Early in his career, he spent time with CB Richard Ellis/Sedway Group providing real estate consulting and financial analysis to private and public clients.

Gaye is responsible for the execution of Westlake’s Development activities including governmental entitlements, strategic planning, site evaluation and project feasibility analyses. She is also directly responsible for the redevelopment of Westlake’s Kirkham Heights residential project in San Francisco.

Prior to joining Westlake, Gaye served in senior management positions in Bay Area real estate development firms and she has managed the design, development and governmental entitlements for several million square feet of commercial real estate, including retail, industrial, office and residential projects.

In addition to over 14 years of experience in the private sector, Gaye brings the unique perspective of having served as a Planning Director in three Bay Area cities: San Mateo, San Leandro and Emeryville.

Gaye holds a Bachelor of Science degree from California Polytechnic State University.

In addition to 15 years of experience in real estate development, Mr. Babsin is an attorney and CPA. Mr. Babsin holds a BS in Accountancy from the University of Illinois, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a Master in City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Eric Tao is tthe Managing Executive Principal of AGI. He has 20-years of experience in the real estate industry and has led the acquisition, entitlement, financing, development and disposition of over 1,500 multifamily residential units in the San Francisco Bay Area with a focus on transit oriented urban infill projects. AGI, LLC was formed in 2006 to manage multifamily development investments for CalPERS. At AGI, Tao has guided the development of nearly 700 new units and secured the pipeline of an additional 450+ new apartment units in the emerging San Francisco SoMa, Dogpatch and Mid-Market districts.

Boards and Activities

Boards: Urban Land Institute San Francisco, SPUR, Housing Action Coalition, Hawaii Chamber of Commerce of Northern California, Art Care SF

Appointments: San Francisco Mayor's Housing Trust Fund Working Group, San Francisco Inclusionary Housing Technical Advisory Committee

Associations: LAI San Francisco

Education

Eric is a graduate of Pomona College in Claremont, CA and received his Juris Doctorate from UC Hastings College of Law.

Adam Tartakovsky is the Executive Vice President overseeing West Coast development for Crescent Heights, focusing on Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles and the implementation of in-house R&D innovations in sustainability, community collaboration and urban design. He attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School of Business. He received bachelor's degrees in Environmental Science and International Politics & Economics at UC Santa Barbara and Tel Aviv University. Adam is a board member of various civic organizations, including the Urban Land Institute, the Housing Action Coalition, the SF Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), and the Friends of the Hollywood Central Park.

For over 30 years, Paul Zeger has been the definitive source of information for new construction sales and marketing in the Bay Area. His leadership in identifying and capitalizing on residential development opportunities is unparalleled. Paul’s client relationships include some of the most successful real estate development firms on the west coast – TMG Partners, Emerald Fund, Lennar Urban and Wilson Meany to name a few. Paul believes in making commitments to his clients, and building trust by delivering on his commitments. Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics at Colgate University and a Masters in Business Administration from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.

In his twenty plus years with MBH, David has proven his versatility on a multitude of project types managing projects in retail, hospitality, multi-family and mixed-use developments. As Studio Director of the Special Projects team, David has successfully carried various Bay Area projects through design to completion, artfully managing strict government guidelines and navigating the challenges presented by clients and consultants. David’s project experience includes the renovation of Hilton San Francisco, the ground-up mixed-use Oakland development Broadway Grand, the LEED Certified San Francisco residential project Ashton and most recently, the LEED Platinum certified mixed-use Berkeley development Higby. As a licensed Architect and Senior Associate, David has been an exemplary role model for each member of his direct team and to all within the company.

Mr. Falconer is a senior managing director and shares responsibility for Hines’ development, acquisition and investment management activities in the San Francisco Bay Area Markets, as well as Sacramento. He serves as a member of the Hines Capital Markets Committee. Since joining Hines in 1997, Falconer has contributed to the development, acquisition, financing, marketing and disposition of more than 10 million square feet of commercial real estate. Falconer earned his Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and his MBA from Stanford University.

Zac Shore is the Co-Founder and Principal of Avenues Development. Avenues Development is a real estate development company located in San Francisco. The company serves as an owner’s representative for a range of development companies and high net-worth individuals throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Services include all aspects of real estate development; from an initial highest and best use feasibility analysis, entitlements, financial analysis, construction management, and general value-add consulting services to get projects on the right track and set up for success. Zac has entitled nearly two thousand units in the Bay Area, built the first modular project constructed overseas and erected in California, and is involved with other emerging technology construction projects. Zac was a general contractor for 10 years, then attended MIT for a degree in Real Estate Development. After MIT, Zac has been involved in many facets of Bay Area Development over the past decade.

Patrick Kennedy is the owner of Panoramic Interests, a development firm that has been building housing, live-work space, and commercial property in the Bay Area since 1990. The firm has focused on dense, mixed-use, mixed-income, infill developments, typically financed with private funds. All of the multi-family housing projects include below market rate units. The firm’s projects incorporate the Smart Growth principles designed to discourage auto use, mitigate sprawl, encourage local business, and enhance the pedestrian streetscape. Mr. Kennedy grew up in the East Bay, and attended Claremont McKenna College, majoring in Economics and English. He is a former member of the Carpenters Union and Steelworkers Union, and the California Bar. After college, he worked as a contractor, and then attended Harvard Law School and MIT, graduating with a J.D. and a Masters in Real Estate Development. Early development work included building his own house, and renovating several small commercial properties. His hobbies include open water swimming and ultra-light backpacking, both of which have furnished surprising insights into his work in development.

With an extensive background in real estate development, construction, and banking, John leverages his robust array of strategies to lead the business development of Teamwrkx Construction.

Prior to joining Teamwrkx, John served as vice president of business development for Heritage Bank of Commerce in San Jose and has more than 25 years of experience in real estate development with prominent Bay Area firms such as Mobile Capital, Westwood Company, Simeon Properties and Cornish and Carey. In addition, as business development manager and partner with South Bay Construction, John helped grow the company’s annual sales from $35 million to $475 million over a seven-year span.

Sarah recently transferred to San Francisco from the Dallas office, where she started 19 years ago after graduating from Kansas State University, to assume the role of Managing Director of the WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff California buildings practice. A talented and dedicated engineer, Sarah is passionate about developing integrated solutions that positively impact projects. She has served as a project manager, production coordinator and project designer on a variety of different projects including hospital facilities, office buildings, hospitality and retail. Sarah has been a featured speaker at the Lean Construction Institute’s Annual Conference, and was named one of Consulting-Specifying Engineer’s “40 Under 40” in 2010.

Jeff is the Program Manager for the Timber & Innovations Group of Lendlease. Currently, he is responsible for promoting and increasing the use of Mass Timber (including Cross Laminated Timber, “CLT”) for a variety of Lendlease endeavors. He is a Certified Green Professional and applies his construction management expertise and sustainability knowledge to each project.

Since joining Lendlease in 2004, he has held multiple positions with escalating responsibilities for ensuring the delivery and operational excellence of the Privatized Army Lodging and Military Housing Privatization Initiative programs.

A recent key accomplishment is the successful delivery of the new Candlewood Suites Hotel at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. This groundbreaking project is the 1st hotel in the United States to utilize Cross Laminated Timber(CLT). Currently it is also the tallest building in the US to utilize CLT for the walls, floors and roof structure. This project has attained a LEED Silver Certification and is projected to consume 31% less energy than a similarly sized hotel in the same climate. This project initially began as an idea to research the practicality of CLT as a potential structural system for buildings which then evolved into analysis of the manufacturing supply chain and design capabilities, schematic design, full design, procurement, and construction delivery finally culminating into an actual project.

Prior to leading the Lendlease team in the construction of new hotels for the Privatization of Army Lodging (PAL) Program he was the Senior Project Engineer at Fort Campbell, KY. He pioneered new approaches to energy and resource conservation in Lendlease’s groundbreaking Zero Energy Homes project at Fort Campbell. This LEED Platinum certified project was the 1st Zero Energy Duplex in the United States and the 1st Zero Energy homes on a military installation. This award winning project provided a creative and viable strategy for achieving real change in the environmental impact of our buildings.

Jeff earned a B.S. and M.S. in Building Construction Management from Purdue University. In 2013, he was recognized by Professional Builder Magazine's ""40 Under 40"" awards.

Gene Klein is the CEO of BarkerBlue, a Bay Area-based document and digital asset management company that acts as the central hub of information on thousands of construction projects across North America. Gene has led the company’s expansion into professional services and jobsite staffing as well as As-Built management of facilities and maintenance information for organizations worldwide. BarkerBlue also provides Environmental Graphics for workspace interiors of the fastest-growing companies in the region.