George Brewster
Biography
George Brewster is Chief Operating Officer of Black Swan Consulting, a private equity and real estate consulting firm based the in San Francisco Bay Area that provides independent investment and strategic advice to high net worth families and businesses, including strategic planning and operations, investment origination, analysis, due diligence, acquisitions and dispositions, repositioning and turnaround of distressed properties, development feasibility, entitlements and project management, equity and debt financing, refinancing and investments, syndication, partnerships and securities origination and compliance.
George brings more than 40 years of executive and entrepreneurial experience across multiple industries, including real estate development and finance, private equity investment and operations, consulting, financial advisory, philanthropy and non-profit management, family office operations, investments and financial planning. George has been involved as an executive and investor with five start-ups and turnarounds and has served on the investment committees of two public companies.
In his prior role as Chief Operating Officer of Ashfield Capital Partners, George was responsible for the operations and finances of Ashfield, as well as budgeting, client relations, real estate strategies, and legal and compliance issues.
Prior to joining Ashfield, George was COO of LTS Capital Advisors and LTS Capital Partners, and prior to that was President of JVA Properties, a private single-family office managing a $350 million real estate portfolio that included office, retail and multi-family properties. As co-founder of BayGroup Advisors, he managed the acquisition and turnaround of a $1.2 billion portfolio of commercial real estate. George has also worked with UBS and Merrill Lynch, and served as a Vice President and a member of the investment committee of Consolidated Capital. As Chief Operating Officer of Bankers Mortgage Corporation, a publicly-traded private equity firm, he was responsible for real estate and financial operations. George was also founding Executive Director of the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR), a public policy and grant-making joint venture between the James Irvine Foundation and The Trust for Public Land.
Mr. Brewster holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College and a Juris Doctor from the joint JD/MBA program of Columbia University. He has completed executive programs at Wharton, UC Berkeley, The Strauss Institute of Pepperdine University and the Center for Creative Leadership. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Greater Farallones Association. Mr. Brewster previously served on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Finance Advisory Board (EFAB), the FINRA Board of Arbitrators, as Vice Chair of the Urban Land Institute Residential Development Council, and as a founding member of the ULI Sustainable Development Council. He holds the professional designations of Counselor of Real Estate (CRE) and Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) an SEC series 7, 22, 39 and 66 licenses.
George is the author of The Ecology of Development (ULI), Land Recycling and the Creation of Sustainable Communities (CCLR), Strategies for Promoting Brownfield Reuse in California (CCLR) and a contributing author to Our Land, Ourselves (The Trust for Public Land). He has appeared before the California State Assembly and the California State Treasurer’s Office and has presented at the University of California Berkeley, Golden Gate University, the Real Estate Roundtable, the UCLA Land Use and Planning Conference and was instrumental in the drafting and passage of SB 324, the California Land Environmental Restoration and Recycling Act.
