Our Team
Jeff is a senior leader in real estate private equity and infrastructure with a 20-plus year track record of innovation in both the private and public sectors. Prior to co-joining Group11, he was a Senior Managing Director and member of the Global Investment Committee at Tishman Speyer. There, he spearheaded the diversification of the company’s U.S. business, including growing its geographic footprint to non-gateway markets and establishing major new business lines in: life science; mixed-use development partnerships with Universities including Carnegie Mellon and Harvard; and affordable housing.
As co-head of U.S. Acquisitions, he was jointly responsible for a national investment and development platform that deployed more than $15 billion in fully capitalized project value across product types and markets.
Prior to that, he was a senior advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Tax associate at Cravath, and an investment banking analyst at Lehman Brothers. He earned his BA, JD, and MBA at Columbia University where he has guest lectured on project finance and transaction management.
Jeff lives in Brooklyn with his family and is on the board of directors of the Prospect Park Alliance.
Mike is a Principal Research Scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. His research interests include database systems, information extraction, knowledge graphs, data systems for causal reasoning, and applying data-intensive methods to economics. He has published extensively in venues such as SIGMOD, VLDB, and elsewhere.
Mike received his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 2009 with advisors Oren Etzioni and Dan Suciu. Before coming to MIT he was a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan from 2009 to 2020.
In addition to his academic work, he co-founded the widely used Hadoop open-source project, and Lattice Data, Inc. which is now part of Apple.
Sophia is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal covering a wide range of subjects including the future, cities, law, education, politics, religion, food, sports, parenting and culture. She is also an editorial consultant specializing in translating ambitious, complex urban visions into compelling and accessible plans for governments, nonprofits and private companies seeking to advance sustainable, equitable goals through large scale urban development.
Nnenna is the Founder & CEO of Xylem Projects, a NYC-based mission-driven real estate investment and development firm. Xylem focuses on high-impact, urban, residential and mixed-use projects and is guided by four pillars: community enrichment, design, sustainability and innovation.
Nnenna has worked at the intersection of real estate, public policy and finance her entire career and has a demonstrated track-record leading complicated, high-profile public- private partnerships. Before founding Xylem, Nnenna was Managing Principal and Head of Development at The Georgetown Company, a Senior Advisor to Mayor Bloomberg on economic development, a partner at Urban Green Builders and an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Prior to launching her career in real estate, economic and community development, Nnenna was a professional middle-distance runner.
Nnenna is an Independent Director for Blackstone Mortgage Trust (BXMT) and AvalonBay Communities (AVB), where she Chairs the Investment & Finance Committee, as well as fintech startup Stake. Nnenna is also Chair of New York Road Runner’s (NYRR), organizer of the NYC marathon and Co-President of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars (AARS). Previously she was a board member of the New York City Housing Authority and a Trustee of Villanova University. In 2021, Nnenna was named the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Fellow at Yale School of Architecture and was the recipient of City & State New York’s Responsible 100 Award in 2019.
Nnenna graduated with a B.A. in Sociology from Villanova University where she earned 5 NCAA titles (4 team and 1 individual) and received an M. Litt in Anthropology from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Nnenna is a born and raised New Yorker and resides in Harlem with her husband and two children.
Suma is a highly experienced attorney, executive, and board advisor with an extensive background in complex infrastructure and real estate development organizations as well as nonprofits, government, and startups.
She is a co-founder of Blue Raven LLP and before that the Chief Administrative Officer of the Gateway Tunnel project, the largest infrastructure project in the United States. Previously, she was the founding general counsel of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, the $300M transformation of the historic Brooklyn Waterfront. Suma earned her BA from Williams College and JD from Columbia Law School and was a law associate at two national firms.
Our Network
