Richard Barkham
Professor of the Practice, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Real Estate Faculty
Our faculty and adjuncts
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Our faculty supports the Leonard W. Wood Centers’ research, education and outreach activities. Our faculty represents the full spectrum of disciplines in business, planning and law that impact the field of commercial real estate.
Richard Barkham
Richard Barkham is a Professor of the Practice and teaches International Real Estate on the MBA level.
He leads a global team of nearly 600 research experts who help CBRE’s clients understand the forces shaping the commercial real estate industry.
One of the world’s leading real estate economists, Richard combines the theoretical framework of an academic with hands-on experience in development to deliver actionable insights for real estate investors and occupiers. A frequent source for both clients and journalists navigating moments of economic volatility, he is particularly interested in the role government stimulus plays in long-term economic recoveries.
Richard began his career as a professor of economics and land management at the University of Reading, where he earned his Ph.D. He is the author of two books and numerous academic and industry papers on the topics of real estate and entrepreneurship, including the acclaimed Real Estate and Globalisation (Wiley Blackwell, Oxford), which explains the impact of the rise of China and Brazil on real estate markets.
After more than a decade, he left academic life for the private sector, serving first as Head of Projects and Consultancy at CB Hiller Parker and later as Director of Research at the London-based property powerhouse Grosvenor Group. He was also a non-executive director of Grosvenor Fund Management, where he was involved in fund strategy, risk analysis and capital raising. He joined CBRE in 2014 as Executive Director and Global Chief Economist. He is also the Chairman of CBRE Econometric Advisors, a specialist real estate forecasting unit.
Sylvia Gross
Professor of the Practice, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Sylvia Gross
Sylvia is a senior executive with more than three decades of real estate expertise with a focus on servicing cross-border and international capital investing in US real estate. She has extensive experience in the areas of investment advisory and management.
From 2003-2021, Sylvia was one of the managers at HQ Capital Real Estate, a privately held real estate advisory firm, representing European capital investing in commercial and residential real estate in the US. She was a member of the firm’s Investment Committee and the Executive Committee responsible for the overall strategy of the company. During her almost two-decades long tenure with the company, she held multiple roles, including investments, financing and client services. As Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations, she was directly responsible for solutions, product development, financings/restructurings and all capital markets activities. She also led the marketing, reporting, and client service teams, as well as the coordination of the firm’s global fundraising efforts.
Prior to joining HQ Capital, Sylvia held positions as Vice President of Finance at Louis Dreyfus Property Group, a New York-based real estate development company and had established the real estate lending group within BHF-BANK (NY) servicing new European investors seeking financing for the US real estate investment. She started her career at Deutsche Bank where she completed the International Management Training Program and later worked as an Associate in the Real Estate Group.
Sylvia is the currently Chair of the Board of AFIRE (Association of Foreign Investors in U.S. Real Estate) and a member of WX (Women Executives in Real Estate), where she is active in the Mentorship Committee. She has also served as a member of the board of Foundry Commercial and is currently a trustee of The Children’s Village and a member of the board of CV Institute.
Currently, Sylvia works as a consultant to several real estate private equity groups focusing on the structure of funds and separate account mandates and supporting the companies in their capital markets activities.
Sylvia became involved with the Wood Center and Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2008 as guest lecturer in the Development Class and often presented workout strategies for specific cases. She was also a judge in the UNC MBA Real Estate Development Challenge for many years and in 2023 authored the case, as well as the case for the ICSC-UNC undergraduate real estate competition.
Sylvia was born and raised in Uruguay, South America and holds a B.A. from Bucknell University and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
David J. Hartzell
Steven D. Bell and Leonard W. Wood Distinguished Professor in Real Estate, Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
David J. Hartzell
David Hartzell examines issues related to the construction of institutional real estate portfolios, publicly traded real estate companies, real estate private equity performance, and real estate finance. He teaches courses in finance and real estate.
He is director of the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Studies. He also is the faculty advisor and also serves on the board of the UNC Real Estate Investment Fund, the real estate private equity fund that is managed by students in the real estate concentration at UNC Kenan-Flagler. The fund is the only student-managed private equity real estate fund in existence.
Dr. Hartzell and Andrew Baum wrote Global Property Investment: Strategies, Structures, Decisions (Wiley Blackwell, 2012), which is used by both students and practitioners of real estate. The book has been adopted for use at many universities in the United States and the U.K. including the University of Cambridge and Oxford University, where they have teaching appointments.
He brings valuable experience as a former vice president at Salomon Brothers Inc. in New York, where his primary focus was on institutional real estate finance and investments. His group was the first to bring commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) to market.
He also worked as a research associate for The Urban Institute and as a financial economist for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of Currency. He served as president of the leading academic real estate group, The American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), in 2000.
Dr. Hartzell serves on the board of directors of Highwoods Properties, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) that focuses its investment and development in the office sector in southeastern markets in the United States. He serves on the investment committee and the audit committee of the board.
He has worked with numerous companies on a consulting basis, notably Heitman Capital Management in Chicago, with whom he has been affiliated since 1994. Additional consulting engagements have included the board of directors of Citigroup, CB Richard Ellis, Weil Gottschall, Cornerstone Research, Henderson Asset Management (U.K.), PRA Securities, Heitman/JMB Advisory Corp., JMB Institutional Realty Corp., Salomon Brothers Inc., Prudential Real Estate Investors, American Council of Life Insurance, Travelers Realty Investment Corporation, GE Capital, Metropolitan Life and ABP (Dutch Public Employees Pension Fund).
Dr. Hartzell served in many administrative roles since joining the faculty. He was the associate dean for MBA Programs, with administrative responsibility for the full-time MBA Program and all Executive MBA Programs from 1994-1998. For most of his years at UNC Kenan-Flagler, he served as director of the Real Estate Program and coordinator of the Real Estate Concentration in MBA Program.
He received his Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill and his M.A. and B.S. from the University of Delaware.
Eric Maribojoc
Professor of the Practice, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Eric Maribojoc
Eric Maribojoc teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in real estate that explore the intricacies of financing affordable housing and real estate development.
He is also an associate director of the Wood Center for Real Estate Studies, leading its housing affordability initiative.
Professor Maribojoc formerly served as executive director of the Center for Real Estate Entrepreneurship at the George Mason University School of Business. He also taught at the graduate real estate program at the Kogod School of Business at American University.
He served on several government boards in Fairfax County, Virginia, including on the Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals and as a commissioner of the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority. He also served on several county housing committees, including on the preservation of market affordable housing units, regulations on manufactured home communities, and incentives for for-sale workforce housing. He was a board member of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, a trade association of affordable housing developers and service providers.
Professor Maribojoc is a real estate professional with over 25 years of experience in all facets of commercial and residential properties, working with private-sector real estate investment funds prior to his work in higher education.
He received his MBA in finance and real estate from the Kogod School of Business at American University and his BA in economics from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.
Jamie McCaskill
Professor of the Practice, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Jamie McCaskill
Jamie McCaskill is a managing partner at Longleaf Law Partners. His practice focuses. on commercial real estate, representing clients in a broad variety of matters, including the acquisition, disposition, financing, development, leasing and management of real property across all asset classes throughout the United States. He has represented clients with transactions worth billions of dollars in the areas of student housing, senior living, hotels and large mixed-used development projects. When working on real estate transactions, Jamie further assists his clients with the formation and negotiation of partnerships, limited liability companies and other business organizations.
With extensive experience handling legal matters related to capital markets and commercial financing, Jamie routinely represents community banks, as well as national banking organizations and large credit unions. He has advised clients on multiple real estate-backed commercial loan originations collateralized by assets located throughout the country.
In addition, Jamie provides counsel to lenders on real estate workouts, financial restructurings and other distressed debt transactions. In this regard, he reviews and analyzes lender remedies under loan documents and other legal papers before advising them as to the rights and obligations of all parties and assists in the repositioning of any distressed assets in receivership or acquired through foreclosure.
He has his BSBA from UNC Chapel Hill and his J.D. from the University of Alabama.
Vrinda Mittal
Assistant Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Vrinda Mittal
Dr. Vrinda Mittal is UNC Kenan-Flagler’s newest assistant professor of finance. She recently graduated with her Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from Columbia Business School. Her research interests include private capital markets, private equity, real estate, and asset pricing.
Dr. Mittal said she is excited to come to UNC Kenan-Flagler, because she said it is the perfect environment for the interplay of research and practical experiences. “Having produced research on various areas of finance, including real estate and private equity, and with multiple practical experiences, I believe I will be able to provide students with a holistic perspective on finance and economics topics,” she said.
Previously, Dr. Mittal graduated from MIT Sloan School of Management with a Master of Finance in 2016 and completed her Bachelor of Arts in Economics with Honors Distinction from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University in 2015.
Jacob Sagi
Professor of Finance and Wood Center in Real Estate Distinguished Scholar; Faculty Director for the MBA Concentration,
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Jacob Sagi
Jacob Sagi is an expert on financial economics, decision theory and real estate finance.
His current research interests include risk and return in commercial real estate assets and related securities markets, text-analysis, the intersection of asset pricing with macroeconomics and real options. His decision theory interests include the modeling of decision making under uncertainty, unforeseen contingencies and reference-dependent choice.
His research has appeared in such leading publications as Econometrica, The Journal of Economic Theory, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics and The Review of Financial Studies.
Dr. Sagi’s research has received numerous distinctions. His work on closed-end funds with Martin Cherkes and Richard Stanton, published in the Review of Financial Studies, received the Best Paper award at the 2006 Utah Winter Finance Conference, one of the most selective conferences in financial economics. His solo work on property-specific risk in commercial real estate was similarly honored in 2017.
Dr. Sagi previously served on the faculty at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in financial economics and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of British Columbia. He earned his B.Sc. with honors in physics from the University of Toronto.
Bob Skinner
Professor of the Practice, Real Estate, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Jim Spaeth
Professor of the Practice, Real Estate, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Jim Spaeth
Jim Spaeth’s expertise is in real estate development and finance. Jim has developed retail and hospitality properties, taking projects from inception to opening. He also has worked in investments, finance and strategic planning. Jim currently teaches the Real Estate Development class as part of the second-year MBA course work and has taught the Real Estate Cases course for first-year MBAs.
He also serves as Executive Director of the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Studies at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In this capacity, he is responsible for supporting the faculty, academic programs, students and extracurricular activities of UNC Kenan-Flagler’s nationally-recognized real state program. Prior to joining the Wood Center in 2013, Jim spent two years in UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA Career Management Center, where he worked with students and employers in the real estate and investment banking industries.
Originally from the Washington DC area, Jim earned undergraduate degrees in Finance and Political Science along with an MBA from the University of Florida. Prior to his arrival at UNC Kenan-Flagler in 2011, Jim held positions in investment banking (Raymond James and CNL) and real estate development (Remora Partners), gaining development expertise in the office, retail, multifamily, hospitality and senior housing sectors.
During his time in Florida, Jim was also involved with the University of Florida’s Center for Real Estate Studies, and has been active in ICSC, NAIOP, and ULI during his real estate career.
Franklin Qian
Assistant Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Franklin Qian
The research and teaching interests of Franklin Qian are urban and labor economics, real estate finance and corporate finance.
Dr. Qian has studied the microstructure of the U.S. housing market using data from millions of bargaining interactions; management practices and firm productivity using employer-employee matched surveys in China; and the effects of a health shock on household income mobility in China.
His current research examines initial public offerings and expectations in the housing market; consequences of San Francisco’s rent control expansion; and the effects of firm entry on communities, neighborhoods, and their residents.
His paper “The Effects of High-skilled Firm Entry on Incumbent Residents” won an honorable mention for the Best Student Paper at the 2020 Urban Economics Association meeting.
Dr. Qian’s research has been published in the American Economic Review and AEA Papers and Proceedings. He is a referee for the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of the European Economics Association and Journal of Urban Economics.
He received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He earned his B.S. in physics and mathematics, summa cum laude, from Duke University