ULI San Francisco: Going Out on Your Own

ULI SF’s NEXT and YLG present an evening celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit of those who have founded their own development firms. Author of the highly acclaimed and entertaining book, Making it in Real Estate: Starting Out as a Developer, John McNellis will kick off the evening discussing his own career and then moderate a panel of Bay Area developers of varying experiences, product type, and geographic areas as they share the challenges, rewards, and lessons learned in starting their own real estate development firms.

• John McNellis, Co-Founder, McNellis Partners
  A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Hastings College of The Law, John practiced law until he co-founded McNellis Partners, a Northern California shopping center development firm, in 1982. A frequent lecturer on real estate topics, John writes a monthly column for the Registry magazine and is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Making it in Real Estate: Starting out as a Developer, a primer on the fundamentals of running a development company that is now an industry standard and taught in universities nationwide. His lecture series on YouTube is the most widely viewed of all of the ULI’s video presentations.

• Fei Tsen, Founder and Managing Partner, Windflower Properties
  Fei has over 30 years of experience in the real estate industry working on complex mixed-use developments. After holding several public agency executive roles such as Director of Real Estate for the Port of San Francisco, Fei founded Windflower properties.  At Windflower Fei completed Union Flats, a 243 unit apartment project near BART in Union City in 2018 and is currently managing the Union City Station District Redevelopment, a mixed-use project with several phases of new parcel development.
• Jerry Smith, Principal, Citrine Advisors
  After a distinguished commercial real estate brokerage in several West Coast cities, Jerry founded Citrine Advisors. While starting his own firm Jerry was an active participant in the ULI Young Leader Group (YLG) Mentorship program.  At Citrine, Jerry oversees all aspects of property acquisition, development, financing, management, investor relations, capital formation, and brokerage.  Citrine has executed the mixed-use redevelopment of several historic buildings in Oakland, San Francisco, and Portland.
• Mark MacDonald, CEO, DM Development
  After graduating with a Computer Systems Engineering degree from Stanford in 1993, Mark held several leadership positions at Oracle Corp. in Engineering, Business Development, and Strategy.  Mark also obtained a MS in Management from Stanford Business School in 2007 before founding DM Development in 2010.  While at DM Development, Mark has completed several luxury condominium projects in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
• Matthew Ticknor, Principal, Junction Properties
  Matt holds a Bachelor degree from Cornell in Design and Environmental Analysis and a Masters in Real Estate Finance from New York University.  He has over a decade of real estate experience and started his career with Real Estate Capital Partners, focused on underwriting acquisitions and development of a significant portfolio of multifamily and commercial projects. Before starting his own firm, Matt worked at Greystar with a dual focus on development and capital markets for multifamily projects in the Northwest United States. At Junction Properties, Matt has completed two ground-up apartment projects in downtown Oakland and is working on project approvals for a third apartment project.

5:15 to 5:45 pm – Registration & Networking

5:45 to 7:00 pm – Welcome, Panel Discussion, Q&A

7:00 to 7:30 pm – Networking Reception

Thank you to Eric Hansen for putting this program together and to Hanson Bridgett for hosting us!