Five leaders from UK real estate, hailing from organisations including the John Lewis Partnership, Art Invest, Ringley / Una Living, Immo Capital, and The Crown Estate, have been appointed by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to join the UK National Council’s Executive Committee. They will serve on a voluntary basis for the next two years.

L-R: top row – Ali Abbas, Mary-Anne Bowring, Samantha Kempe; bottom row – Shelley Matthews, Katherine Russell

The new committee members include:

• Ali Abbas, UK Managing Partner, Art-Invest Real Estate Management UK Ltd: With more than 25 years of investment, capital management and business operations experience, Ali Abbas leads Art-Invest Real Estate’s UK business and is responsible for investment strategy and business development.
• Mary-Anne Bowring, Group Managing Director, Ringley / Una Living: With over 26 years property experience as a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Surveyor, Mary-Anne leads a team of specialists at the integrated property services provider offering Asset Management, facilities management, lettings and property management and other services.
• Samantha Kempe, Co-Founder and CIO of IMMO Capital: Samantha has around 20 years’ experience working across private equity and corporate finance at companies including Blackstone, PwC, and Cushman & Wakefield. IMMO Capital is a tech-enabled end-to-end operating platform focused on scaling, retrofitting and managing Single-Family Residential portfolios for institutional investors across Europe.
• Shelley Matthews, Strategy Director, The Crown Estate: Shelley is a Chartered Surveyor with over 25 years’ experience in real estate valuation, capital markets and investment management across the globe. In her current role she leads the development and implementation of strategies across The Crown Estate’s real estate portfolio.
• Katherine Russell, Director of Build to Rent, the John Lewis Partnership: With more than 15 years property experience, Katherine leads the company’s plans to transform some of its sizable brownfield property portfolio to deliver much-needed homes, professionally managed by the Partnership, designed to have a wider positive social impact on the communities it serves. She previously headed up the Group Real Estate.

The Executive Committee is responsible for contributing to the strategic direction of the National Council, and delivering UK specific programmes, conferences and events and educational forums to remembers on issues impacting the industry that facilitate collaboration and the exchange of knowledge. The UK National Council’s focus is to bring together a variety of public and private sector stakeholders to find solutions and build consensus around land use and development challenges.

ULI UK is chaired by Mark Collins, an Executive Director and Chairman of Residential at CBRE.

Mark Collins comments, “A warm welcome to all our new committee members, who are from among the most engaged and ambitious in our industry, and who collectively will bring a wealth of expertise, connections, and leadership to ULI UK. I’m looking forward to working with them on addressing the wide range of critical challenges impacting UK real estate in the current environment, such as the decarbonisation of real estate and housing attainability. I’m confident that their passion, innovation, and commitment will also help us in our ambitions for growth, including in our desire to grow our regional membership across the UK, while also ensuring that ULI’s global mission priorities are at the centre of our programmes.”

The new UK Executive Committee members will join current members including Imogen Thompson (Chair, Young Leader Group); Van Stults, Orion Capital Managers LLP; Peter Denton, Homes England; Nick Green, Squire Patton Boggs; Yohance Harper, Quadrant Estates; Simon Powell, Greater London Authority; Roelof Opperman, CogNovum; Andrew Teacher, founder of Blackstock Consulting; and Megan Walters, PIMCO Prime Real Estate. Ashley Perry, Investment Director, Apache Capital, was also recently confirmed as the new Chair of the ULI UK Residential Product Council.

The ULI is a non-profit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide. In the UK, ULI has over 1300 members nationwide from across the built environment.

Many of ULI UK’s new Executive Committee will be introduced to members at the forthcoming ULI UK Annual Conference which takes place at Tobacco Dock in London on 30 April with the theme ‘Orchestrating Urban Change’. The event will feature keynote speakers including Will Page, former Chief Economist at Spotify, Shain Shapiro, author of the placemaking title ‘This Must be the Place’, and Megan Walters, PIMCO Prime Real Estate. The one-day programme will explore a variety of topics impacting the built environment, including the future of cities, residential retrofitting, capital markets, cross border capital, and placemaking.

Ends

For further information, contact [email protected]

Images of the five new committee members are available here via the links:

• Ali Abbas, UK Managing Partner, Art-Invest Real Estate Management UK Ltd
• Mary-Anne Bowring, Group Managing Director, Ringley / Una Living
• Samantha Kempe, Co-Founder and CIO of IMMO Capital.
• Shelley Matthews, Strategy Director,The Crown Estate
• Katherine Russell, Director of Build to Rent, the John Lewis Partnership

Notes to Editors

The Urban Land Institute is a non-profit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the institute has over 48,000 members worldwide representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines. In Europe ULI has almost 5,500 members across 15 National Council country networks.

ULI UK is the largest ULI National Council in Europe with over 1,300 members from the private and public sectors representing all disciplines within the UK commercial and residential property market.

For more information on ULI UK, visit https://uk.uli.org/