Parren James is an investment executive with more than a decade of experience managing portfolios and driving investment efforts. His commercial real estate expertise spans acquisitions, asset management, and nearly every property type on the market, from industrial, office, and multi-family, to hospitality and retail. He began his career through participation in Sprint’s Leadership Development Program, where he led a multi-million-dollar capital infrastructure project across two hospitals and an additional seven facilities. Parren then went on to serve in various leadership positions—including serving as VP of Operations + Portfolio Management—at International Airports Corporation (IAC), a Chicago-based private equity company. After a brief stint on the equity investment team at MetLife Investment Management, where he worked on both acquisitions and asset management for the San Francisco Regional Office, Parren is now a Principal of Real Estate at Grounded Capital. Parren possesses an MBA in Real Estate & Finance from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Hampton University. In his free time, Parren is actively involved in his local community. MBA | CCIM | LEED AP Above text is from Parren's LinkedIn.

Lauren Krause has dedicated her career to enabling development throughout the West Coast. Most recently, she led Oxford Properties' Life Sciences anchored platform. Prior to Oxford, Lauren focused on multifamily development at Grosvenor and Carmel Partners. She received her Master of Business Administration from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and her Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning at UC San Diego. Lauren is an active member of ULI, serving as the Chair of the National Urban Design Mixed Use Product Council (Blue Flight) and is also active with BREAA. She lives with her children in Marin and in her spare time enjoys mountain biking, skiing, and pottery.

Yusef Freeman is a Partner at The Vistria Group in Real Estate. Prior to joining Vistria, Yusef served as the Sr. Managing Director of California for the Jonathan Rose Companies, leading ground-up development and acquisitions on the West Coast out of the Companies’ Oakland, CA office. He served as a Vice President of Investments in the transactions group at PGIM Real Estate, sourcing investment opportunities for the real estate private equity funds of the company. In addition, he was the Managing Director for McCormack Baron Salazar, leading west coast operations and new business development nationally for the company, and a Graduate Program lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Freeman holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley where he spent one year studying abroad at the American University in Cairo, Egypt; a Master of Public Administration from New York University, where he majored in public finance as a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow; and an alum of the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence Fellowship Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the board of the National Housing Trust and as an advisor to the Terner Center at UC Berkeley and Catalyst Housing.

Based in San Francisco, I focus on the coordination of strategic and tactical investment themes and opportunities in partnership with PGIM Real Estate’s European, Asia Pacific and Latin American funds and their respective local portfolio management and investment teams. In this new role, I have joined PGIM Real Estate’s European, Asia Pacific and Latin American Investment Committees and will provide portfolio reviews to our institutional investor clients. I bring more than 30 years of global real estate experience to PGIM Real Estate. Most recently, I served as co-head of BGO’s prop-tech innovation and investment team and was the COO of the company’s Global Capital Raising and Investor Relations group. Prior to BGO, I was a senior advisor to the Accord Group, and before that, served for a decade in Hong Kong as the CEO of CBRE Global Investors - Asia Pacific (after the acquisition of ING REIM Asia). I held several management positions at ING Clarion in New York, ING Real Estate Investment Management in Europe and China, and started my career at Brooke Hillier Parker in Hong Kong and Beijing. I received my bachelor’s degree from The University of Leeds in the UK with Joint Honors in Chinese and Management Studies. I am a Trustee, Foundation Governor and former member of Global Board of Directors of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). I am a former Board Member of AFIRE (Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate), and ANREV (Asian Association of Investors in Non-listed Real Estate Vehicles). From 2017 – 2022, I served as a Non-Executive Director of Chayora Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong based data center business and was an Advisor to Juniper Square, a San Francisco-based, private markets focused, software company from 2019 - 2024.