AREF FutureGen Conference 2025

Alex joined Chalkhill Partners in March 2025.

Mark Clacy-Jones is Head of Real Estate Strategy at Aberdeen, responsible for a small team producing, guiding and facilitating optimal fund level strategy across the global suite of abrdn Real Estate funds. This role also focuses on understanding the performance drivers of funds and their risk levels. Prior to joining Standard Life Investments in January 2017, Mark spent 9 years at IPD, and subsequently MSCI, working in a range of global research roles including Head of Indices and ultimately Head of Applied Real Estate Research. Mark also had a brief spell setting up a Data & Analytics function for Knight Frank’s Research Team just prior to joining SLI.

 A former Chair of the Society of Property Researchers, Mark is currently Chair of the AREF Research Committee and Chair of the INREV ODCE Working Group.

 Mark holds a BA Economics from Leicester University and a MA Business & Management in Emerging Markets from Reading University.

Richard has been a business communications coach, facilitator and role player for nearly 20 years, as well as a professional actor for 25.

Passionate about helping people find the most confident, authentic version of themselves, he has worked with senior business leaders, largely in global companies, across a wide variety of sectors. These include banking, pharma, luxury goods, the law (many magic circle firms) and professional services (several of the big four accounting firms).

As an actor, Richard works in film, television, theatre and voiceover. He has appeared many times in the West End and at the National Theatre. On screen, he has helped negotiate the coalition government, as David Laws, and basked in Caribbean luxury, on the island of Mustique, as Colin Tennant.

He read History at Durham.

Dona specialises in investment funds. She enjoys helping firms, government departments, charities, universities, and others establish, manage, and invest in funds. From setting up an innovative structure, to solving a problem for a manager, to advising an investor on a fund's terms, Dona is passionate about helping clients create innovative structures or engage in emerging finance opportunities.

Danielle joined Mills & Reeve in 2016 and is a Principal Associate in the Real Estate team. Danielle advises on all transactional real estate work including acquisitions and disposals, portfolio management and development work across the core investment markets of office, retail and industrial and logistics

Andrew Grigson is a managing director at PGIM Real Estate. Based in London, Andrew is responsible for business development, capital raising and marketing PGIM Real Estate’s global real estate products and services to UK and Dutch institutional investors.

Prior to joining PGIM Real Estate in 2009, Andrew was a director of the UBS Global Asset Management UK Real Estate business, originally joining the team in 2004 as an asset manager but latterly handling investor relations for the UBS Triton Property Fund.

Earlier, Andrew spent 10 years with Jones Lang LaSalle / LaSalle Investment Management, working mostly on UK discretionary separate account mandates.

Andrew is a member nominated Trustee of the PGIM UK Retirement Savings Scheme and is also a Trustee of a London-based charity.  

Andrew has over 26 years of real estate industry experience and is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Carine is a Product Manager at Schroders Capital. In her role she supports the UK team with strategic and ongoing client and product management. Prior to this Carine was at CBRE Investment Management and Aviva Investors as a Product Specialist covering long income, European logistics and European value-add strategies.

 Carine graduated from the University of Nottingham with a LLB in Law with South East Asian Law.

Will joined the Townsend Group as an Analyst in April 2021, after completing the MSc, Real Estate at Henley Business School.

The Founded in 1983, The Townsend Group, an Aon Company, is a leading provider of global investment management and advisory services focused exclusively on real estate and real assets. Committed to excellence in investment management and client service, Townsend serves an institutional client base providing custom investment solutions to help meet the needs and objectives of their investment programs. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, the firm has offices in San Francisco, London and Hong Kong.

 

Taryn joined CBRE Investment Management in 2021. Her role includes investment transactions, asset management and fund management across the CBRE UK Property PAIF and two separate account clients.

Prior to CBRE IM, Taryn worked at Cushman & Wakefield.

Taryn hold an MSc in Real Estate from Oxford Brookes University (2017) and is a member of the RICS (2019).

Hattie is an Assistant Fund Manager at Aviva Investors working on the Real Estate Active Long Term Asset Fund (REALTAF) which was launched in April 2023. 

REALTAF adopts a research-led thematic investment strategy, allocating capital to our highest conviction sectors including Urban Warehousing, Rental Housing, Life Sciences, Data Centres and Film Studios. The fund has a 6% total return target on a 5 year rolling basis and was launched with £1.6bn of Aviva seed capital across 37 UK assets. 

Hattie worked on the fund prior to its launch focusing on strategy, ESG and asset selection. Hattie originally rotated through the Aviva Investors graduate scheme and worked for a year at Colliers International in the valuation department. Hattie has completed the Investment Management Certificate and holds a MSc in Real Estate from Cass Business School and a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Bristol. 

Ivan de Klee is an international conservationist and natural capital expert who specialises in natural process led ecosystem recovery. Ivan started his conservation career working in India before running the national program for Fauna and Flora International in South Sudan after which he returned to the UK. After 4 years at the Knepp Estate developing the natural capital program, Ivan joined Nattergal as Head of Natural Capital where he now leads the nature recovery plans for their sites and the development of natural capital.

Georgie Nelson is Head of ESG for Real Estate at abrdn. She is responsible for heading up ESG strategy and integration for abrdn’s real estate investments business with a specialist focus on climate and biodiversity. She also sits in the Natural Capital team to support the company’s wider natural capital offering and is involved in some of the live pilots of the TNFD framework with numerous internal and external stakeholders.

Georgie sits on numerous expert industry working groups both in the UK and globally including co-chair of the European Investments Working Group for the Better Buildings Partnership and is a member of the technical standards board at Wilder Carbon. Prior to abrdn, Georgie worked at Carbon Intelligence supporting and delivering on sustainability solutions for investors and corporates.

Greta is leading the expansion of Aviva Investors’ capability in direct natural capital and nature-based investing and the resulting interaction with voluntary carbon markets. As co-Portfolio Manager on the recently launched Private Markets Carbon Removal Fund, she is responsible for origination and financial and impact analyses of new opportunities. Prior to joining Aviva Investors, Greta worked on project financing renewables and impact ventures in emerging markets and strategy consulting. She holds Natural Resources Engineering and Financial Economics degrees from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her engineering degree focused on renewable energy, water engineering, and nature-based solutions.