CrowdStreet has expanded its senior leadership team with the appointment of three new executives. Collectively, they bring more than two decades of experience building and growing large-scale tech, real estate, and security organizations.
“Robert, Londa, and John are exceptional additions to our talented leadership team. They all support our vision to build the largest and most diverse marketplace for direct equity investing in commercial real estate,” said Tore Steen, Chief Executive Officer of CrowdStreet. “These executives each bring deep experience and industry knowledge required during this important transformation of the commercial real estate market and as we scale our business and platform as the preferred Marketplace for investors and CRE professionals.”
Robert Stiles joins the company as CFO/COO with over 20 years of accounting and finance experience, including 10 years of expertise in the real estate industry. He will lead CrowdStreet’s financial operations, legal and compliance efforts and will help accelerate the company’s next phase of growth. Stiles previously held the position of CFO at LendingHome, one of the largest residential fix-and-flip digital marketplaces, where his primary focus was leading the finance, legal, risk and capital market teams on developing growth strategies and assisting with related capital raises, credit models, and evaluation of financial models. He holds an MBA from Columbia University and a BA in Accounting from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
“CrowdStreet has developed a very interesting Marketplace which is quickly becoming the destination that brings highly vetted commercial real estate investments to individuals and provides sponsors and developers with a better way to promote and raise capital for real estate projects. They have a team that is second-to-none and I can’t wait to dive in during this moment of growth and opportunity,” said Robert Stiles.
Londa Quisling joins CrowdStreet as the new Chief Technology Officer. Most recently she was the Chief Product Officer at Treehouse, which provides online technical education and apprenticeship programs. Quisling is an accomplished engineering and product technology executive who has served in various roles with high-tech start-ups for more than 20 years. Quisling will help usher CrowdStreet into its next phase of growth with a product focus and team-building orientation. She holds a BS in Applied Mathematics from the Engineering School at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It is an exciting time to be a part of the team that is democratizing real estate investing through marketplace technology which has proven to be disruptive in other vertical markets, I am also inspired by CrowdStreet’s commitment to diversity and inclusion,” Quisling said.
John D. Havens joins CrowdStreet as the Vice President of Capital Markets. Havens is an accomplished financial services professional with deep experience in real estate finance and development, institutional and alternative investment capital raising, corporate finance, and capital markets. Havens joins CrowdStreet from BNY Mellon, where his roles included leading a global corporate banking team as well as managing sales and client relationship teams for a global equity asset management boutique. Havens has also held leadership positions at GM, Chase Manhattan, PNC and Boston Financial. He holds an A.B. in Economics from Princeton.
“In the world of commercial real estate investing, CrowdStreet has built a compelling and powerful solution set to connect investors to opportunities. The company’s growth trajectory and state of the art Marketplace that connects investors with commercial real estate firms really caught my interest. I look forward to bringing my institutional background to this entrepreneurial team as the company enters its next phase of growth,” said John D. Havens.
In addition to these new executives, CrowdStreet has hired 36 employees in 2019 to date and has plans to grow even more in 2020. The company’s internal growth plan is in direct response to the firm’s growing sponsor and investor networks. Recently, CrowdStreet won the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) 2019 Growth Stage Company of the Year award. In terms of revenue, the Growth Stage category is the largest of the company awards and OEN likes to call the winner of this category, “Oregon’s Next Household Name.”