Corporate Real Estate Executive, Dealmaker, Builder, and industry innovator with more than 25 years of broad experience. Over the past 12 years Jeff has guided the formation and evolution of the Corporate Real Estate function for three multinational organizations, Amazon, PepsiCo & Diageo, leveraging experience gained at KPMG, Trammell Crow, and working as an Architect.

Built transaction and construction teams and directly executed large and complex real estate deals. Developed best in class transaction and construction processes for high volume organizations managing over 200 transactions/ year.

In these roles he has developed and implemented the long term strategy for the corporate real estate function, aligning resources, implementing processes and systems to create a sustainable operation, which meets corporate needs, and safeguards its assets.

Led numerous large complex real estate transactions and design and construction projects many over $100M, both domestically and internationally, including industrial build to suits, a fast track HQ renovation, an R&D Center in China, a HQ in India, and domestic and structured finance industrial projects domestically and in Quebec, CA, and Spain.

Mr. Lewis is Chairman and founder of Wharton Industrial, a fully integrated investor and

developer of last mile, urban infill and larger distribution facilities located along the

Eastern Seaboard, Florida and the Southeast United States. Wharton Industrial is a

platform company of New York-based real estate investment firm, Wharton Equity

Partners, which Mr. Lewis founded in 1987.

In forming Wharton Industrial in 2017, Mr. Lewis sought to capitalize on the secular

change in industrial real estate brought on by the emergence of e-commerce. Since that

time, Wharton Industrial has acquired and developed over 4.5 million SF of warehouses.

Notable transactions include the development of a 988,000-SF bulk distribution facility in

Atlanta, GA which was leased to Phillips van Heusen before completion; the acquisition

of a 283,500-SF former subway repair facility in Philadelphia, which was completely

renovated into a last-mile distribution center, leased to Amazon and sold in November

2020; and the development of a 617,000-SF bulk distribution warehouse located in Ocala,

FL, which was leased to Amazon and sold to a REIT at the highest per-square-foot price

ever achieved in the market in June 2020.

Wharton Industrial’s growth has been fueled by joint ventures with such firms as Starwood

Capital, Carlyle and Walton Street Capital.

Wharton Industrial’s market leadership and forward-thinking approach flows from that of

its parent company, Wharton Equity Partners. Over the course of the last three decades,

Mr. Lewis has been the visionary force behind shaping Wharton Equity’s prowess as an

opportunistic investor that has consistently been ahead of the curve in making large bets

on emerging real estate trends in industrial, multi-family, self-storage and other asset

classes.

Over his career, Mr. Lewis has been involved in well over $2 billion of real estate

transactions. In addition, Mr. Lewis and Wharton Equity are active venture capital

investors with a focus on later-stage growth companies. The firm’s current holdings

include positions in Dataminr and Latch.

Mr. Lewis received his BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of

Pennsylvania and his MBA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He

is a sought-after industry speaker and a frequent guest lecturer at Columbia Business

School on the topic of “The Future of Real Estate.” Mr. Lewis resides in Old Westbury,

Long Island with his wife and three children.