I am Anglo-Irish, son of an English father and an Irish mother. I grew up in England. My English grandparents met when they were domestic servants in a stately home in the Midlands. She was a chambermaid and he was an ostler, looking after the horses. My Irish grandparents were farmers out west in the Republic. I feel at home in both countries.
I am the first of my family line to have gone to university, reading Physiological Sciences at Lincoln College, Oxford. I was only able to afford do so because of the government grant system at the time and I’m not so sure that I would have been able to do so now. Because of my background social mobility has a particular importance to me.
I fell into real estate in 1988 and have enjoyed working in the industry ever since, performing many roles as a researcher and forecaster, an investment strategist and, for twenty years, as a fund investor. In the latter role I was a transaction adviser to global pension funds, a real estate multimanager and head of a European real estate team in a multi-asset environment for a global investment consultant. In that time I worked with clients and fund managers across the globe and learned a tremendous amount about different cultures and markets. I speak French, German and Brazilian Portuguese pretty well.
I now lead a UK real estate trade association, chair an advisory board for a UK university real estate department and sit on a number of other industry steering groups.