Eileen Byrne

In her 33-year real estate career, Eileen Byrne has specialized in solving investment problems, structuring and restructuring funds and properties, and creating investment strategies. She has spent nearly twenty years as a fiduciary to public and private pensions, foundations and endowments around the world.

Eileen retired in 2008 as Managing Director of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), a $1.4 trillion AUM global investment management firm. As Global Head of Real Estate Account Management, one of her responsibilities was developing and structuring investment funds and separate accounts for much of the $30 billion in real estate held for clients in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. As the designated Principal for real estate, she was responsible for overseeing compliance with fiduciary, regulatory, and contractual standards. She served on the Management Committee and Global Investment Committees for real estate.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Byrne was a Principal of The Townsend Group, the largest institutional real estate investment consultancy in the U.S. She advised clients on investment strategy, fund and manager selection, performance evaluation, fund and fee restructurings, and resolving differences and issues with managers.

She has also: led a real estate asset management group for a U.S. subsidiary of a UK multi-national; served as an advisor on development, redevelopment, land planning, site selection and leasing of office, retail, residential and mixed-use projects; underwritten and financed public and private debt for real estate, and participated in public debt offerings. Eileen began her career in government, structuring public-private debt packages for hard-to-finance commercial projects in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she did workouts, problem-solving and asset management on complex real estate assets.

Eileen has been a leader in the institutional real estate industry, and has served as a director of the Pension Real Estate Association and as a Council Vice-Chair and on Plan Advisory Panels for the Urban Land Institute. She is a graduate of Marymount College in New York (BA) and Florida State University (MS).