Bio
Todd S. Rich is the Co-Founder and Partner of Declaration Partners and the Head of Real Estate, serving as chairman of Declaration’s Real Estate Investment Committee. Todd, who is based in the Bethesda, MD office, co-founded Declaration with two decades of multi-market real estate investing and operating experience including acquisitions, dispositions, development, leasing, and management of portfolios involving over $20 billion of institutional quality real estate. Previously, Todd was an Owner and Partner at The JBG Companies where he served as a member of its Investment and Management Committees. He was involved in strategic efforts culminating in the creation of JBG SMITH Properties as a public REIT (NYSE: JBGS). Prior to The JBG Companies, Todd was a Managing Director at Tishman Speyer where he was responsible for the business activities of the Washington, DC region and worked in Tishman Speyer’s Chicago, London, and New York offices.
Todd currently serves on the boards of the SED Center and the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) of Greater Washington and formerly served on the board of the Economic Club of Washington. He graduated from Princeton University and was a Fulbright Scholar living in Argentina and Brazil. Outside of work, Todd enjoys reading and spending time with his wife and three children at the beach and on the slopes.
Show Notes
- Declaration Partners is a Registered Investment Advisor investing with a family office mindset and institutional capabilities (5:50)
- Founded to invest first David Rubenstein‘s personal capital from Declaration Capital, his family office (6:45)
- Focus on growth equity in private companies (7:45)
- Real estate investing (8:00)
Origins and Education
- Mother passed away recently. Felt loved by both parents. (8:30)
- Type of love was not atypical of growing up in Suburban New Jersey (9:10)
- Immigrant mentality of growing up in the United States (9:30)
- Take advantage of resources and both achieve more than parents and leave a legacy (9:50)
- Dad was son of immigrant who came from Poland during WW2 avoiding the Holocaust and started a textile company (10:15)
- Grew up in NJ and went to college and became an accountant (10:50)
- Todd felt that his impetus to start a company from his Dad’s and Grandfather’s influence (11:20)
- Mom was always interested in education and loved reading the newspaper who influenced him in current events (11:40)
- Take family to every museum (12:30)
- East Brunswick HS (13:15)
- Attended Princeton University– Met some of his closest friends there (13:20)
- Studied Economics with Finance and Latin American Studies (14:00)
- Awarded Fulbright Scholarship to go to Argentina and experienced a tumultuous time there with an unstable economy and political system while in private equity (14:15)
- Intrigued learning about other languages and thought that Argentina was recovering (15:20)
- Wall Street Banks were doing financial engineering and not really creating value, so thought that real estate investing and operations was...
