May 9, 2011

Gadi Kaufmann of RCLCO to give Berman real estate lecture

Through its generosity and visionary thinking, the family of Baltimore businessman Allan L. Berman became the driving force behind real estate business education at The Johns Hopkins University with the creation in 1989 of the Allan L. Berman Institute for Real Estate Development and an annual lecture. This year’s lecture will be given by Gadi Kaufmann, managing director and CEO of RCLCO (Robert Charles Lesser & Co.), and will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10, at the Carey Business School’s Harbor East campus.

Kaufmann, whose remarks are titled “From Risk to Opportunity: Making Strategic Real Estate Decisions in an Uncertain World,” joined RCLCO in 1979. He specializes in economic consulting for real estate projects and portfolios, corporate strategy planning and management consulting at the enterprise level, transactional and negotiation services, and financing and capital formation strategy formulation and implementation.

RCLCO functions as a premier end-to-end solutions provider in the global real estate sector serving developers, lenders, private and institutional investors, and non–real estate entities (such as corporations, trusts and foundations, not-for-profit entities and the government/public sectors) worldwide. The firm offers entity- and portfolio-level strategy planning, economic and market analysis advisory work, due diligence and underwriting services, workouts and restructuring work, turnkey development management services and transaction services.

Long active in a wide range of real estate, business and education organizations, Kaufmann has served as a trustee of the Urban Land Institute since 2001 and as governor of the ULI Foundation, among other positions. He chaired the organization’s 2010 annual meeting and is currently chair of its membership committee. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., ULI is an international organization whose mission is to provide leadership in the responsible and sustainable use and development of land.

Kaufmann is also a founding member of the board and chair of the Professional and Community Outreach Committee of the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate at the University of California, Los Angeles, a joint center of the Anderson School of Management and the School of Law, which creates and administers UCLA’s activities in the real estate field.

In addition, he served on the board and in various leadership positions for the Young Presidents’ Organization, an international business initiative for education and idea exchange, from 1988 to 2010, and on the executive committee of the international board of the Chief Executives Organization from 2006 to 2009.

Kaufmann holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from UCLA.

A 5:30 p.m. reception precedes the lecture. To register for the reception and lecture, and for more information, go to www
.carey.jhu.edu/berman.