CREC Leadership Team
Profiles of the national Leadership Team of the Cornell Real Estate Council
The current CREC Leadership Team includes a handful of Regional Leaders running Regional Chapters, a 5-member Board of Directors, and a CREC Steering Committee, a group of fewer than a dozen alumni who are doing the heavy lifting to launch CREC as an official not-for-profit organization, and launch this website. We are looking to expand our Leadership Team; please scroll down to see how you can get involved.
David Rupert is President of Griffin Capital Company, a privately-held, Los Angeles-headquartered alternative investment asset manager with approximately $11 billion in assets under management. Griffin manages, sponsors or co-sponsors a platform of six institutional-quality investment solutions distributed by the firm’s captive broker dealer, Griffin Capital Securities, to retail investors through a community of partners, including independent and insurance broker-dealers, wirehouses, RIA firms and the financial advisors who work for those enterprises. Mr. Rupert is a member of the investment committee and an officer of most of the firm’s products.
David’s 36 years of commercial real estate and finance experience includes over $10 billion of transaction volume on four continents; his career began in the early 1980’s at Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan) in the credit analysis, loan workout and commercial lending areas, and continued at investment banking firm Salomon Brothers (now Citi), where for a decade he was a senior member of the real estate finance department. Between 2008 and 2010 Mr. Rupert co-headed an opportunistic hotel fund in partnership with The Olympia Companies, an 800-employee hotel owner-operator, and served as partner in a private equity firm focused on hotel and multifamily residential development in Eastern Europe.
For the past 22 years Mr. Rupert has served on the Real Estate Advisory Committee to the Cornell University endowment fund; in 2012 Mr. Rupert was appointed Co- Chairman of that group. Mr. Rupert is a founding board member of the master’s program in real estate at Cornell, and for more than two decades has guest lectured in graduate-level courses and served as a student mentor. Mr. Rupert currently serves as the President of the Cornell Real Estate Council and President and Chairman of the Board of the Harvard Business School Real Estate Alumni Association. He holds a BA from Cornell and an MBA from Harvard.
Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Amanda began her real estate career with Canyon Partners, LLC where she was instrumental in the expansion of a nationwide development platform focused on social impact investments.
She later received her Masters in Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California, where she was awarded the Lusk Endowment scholarship upon acceptance to the program, was a member of the NAIOP Competition champion team while attending school, and upon graduation, was awarded the Dollinger Program Distinction award for exceptional academic and professional engagement.
After graduating, she was an Asst. Development Manager for The Ratkovich Company, a boutique development firm focused on institutional-scale deals. Engaged in both value-add & ground-up multi-use developments, Amanda worked in all capacities across the company portfolio, ranging from urban transit-oriented leasing & construction, suburban historical recapitalization & entitlements, as well as pre-development design review & capital raise for a ground lease with the Port of Los Angeles.
In addition to supporting the Cornell Real Estate Council, Amanda is Founder & Principal of INDI Properties, a military housing investment platform, and is actively developing a consulting portfolio with institutional real estate partners.
George is a sophomore in the Hotel School with a minor in Real Estate from Dorado, Puerto Rico. George has completed internships at the Plaza Hotel, JLL, and Hodges Ward Elliott. George will be spending his sophomore summer at UBS Investment Bank’s Investment Banking Division in New York City. On-campus, George is involved with the Cornell Real Estate Club, his social fraternity, and is an Orientation Leader. In his free time, George likes watching Miami Heat basketball, learning about the different travel reward programs, and listening to pagode music. Career-wise, George is hoping to pursue a career in Hotel Acquisitions.
CREC is looking for leaders (and those who would like to grow into leaders) to join our Leadership Team. We are reaching out to alumni of Cornell University who work in the very broadly defined ‘real estate industry’ and to current students studying real estate or related fields, to encourage your involvement.
Just as Cornell was founded on a mission of diversity, so too are we focused on building a leadership team with diverse points of view, and varying degrees of experience and seniority. We would like to re-engage those who have volunteered in the past, and attract new leaders, including those who are in the early stages of their careers. Our needs are broad and include: