Mr. Petersen has 28 years of diverse real estate experience including 21 years of principal-side investment management roles at leading private equity firms. Most recently, Mr. Petersen was an Advisor and Partner at Wildcatter Investments. Concurrent with his activities at Wildcatter, Mr. Petersen provided consulting services to a variety of institutional and private equity clients, including Invitation Homes (Blackstone), Raven Capital Management, Situs Companies, Ares Management and others.
Previously, Mr. Petersen was Managing Partner, Heartland Capital Group, overseeing all investment and credit underwriting activities for Heartland’s investments. Prior to Heartland, Mr. Petersen served as a Principal at Ares Management, LLC and was a founding member of Ares’ commercial real estate group, and acted as Chief Credit Officer for the firm’s western U.S. investment activity. While at Ares, Mr. Petersen was active in its acquisition of Wrightwood Capital, and the subsequent formation and launch of it’s sponsored mortgage REIT, Ares Commercial Real Estate Corp. (NYSE: ACRE).
Prior to Ares, Mr. Petersen was a Director, founding member and Chief Credit Officer for AllBridgeInvestments, LLC and was primarily responsible for managing AllBridge’s credit process including the underwriting, due diligence, negotiating and closing of its real estate investments as well as select asset management duties. Prior to joining AllBridge, Mr. Petersen served in a variety of roles at Olympus Real Estate Partners. In these capacities, Mr. Petersen worked directly with the CEO, CFO, and COO to develop and implement strategic initiatives, both at the corporate and asset level, including Olympus’ $2.0 billion take-private acquisition of Walden Residential. In addition, Mr. Peterson led select portfolio and single asset financing/refinancing initiatives and was otherwise directly involved in acquisition and asset management activity of a $2.5 billion real estate portfolio primarily focused on the firm’s multifamily, hospitality, commercial and golf initiatives. Before Olympus, Mr. Petersen served for over ten years in various capacities with Lone Star Funds/Hudson Advisors, The Hampstead Group (including the IPO of Bristol Hotel Company), Alliance Partners, Inc. and CB Commercial (now CBRE), and during that time was directly involved in merger, acquisition and financing activities with transaction values in excess of $4.0 billion. Mr. Petersen earned a B.S. in Real Estate/Finance from Arizona State University in 1991.