Boston — Longfellow Real Estate Partners, the largest privately owned life science real estate services firm in the United States, announced a restructuring of its leadership team following the company’s substantial growth throughout 2020 and Q1 2021.
The reorganization will maximize the firm’s corporate efficiency, build out internal reporting capabilities and processes, and further enhance its abilities to scale rapidly within the most dynamic life science markets.
As part of the organizational changes, Longfellow co-founders and former Managing Partners Adam Sichol and Jamie Peschel will each take on new roles and responsibilities. Sichol will become the firm’s first Chief Executive Officer, a newly created position in which he will be responsible for directing Longfellow’s overall strategic direction and its continued portfolio expansion. In his new role as Senior Partner, Peschel will step back from day-to-day oversight of Longfellow. He will provide oversight of the investments team and focus on strategy, investment management, fundraising, and investor relations.
In addition, Longfellow Partner Jessica Brock will expand her existing responsibilities as Partner, Real Estate Operations. In addition to leading the Raleigh Durham region, she will collaborate with vertical heads across Longfellow’s portfolio and provide guidance to the Managing Directors of both of the firm’s growing California-based regions in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.
Senior executives Joe Van Saun and Jill Ratke will retain their titles as Partners, while also expanding their areas of responsibilities. Van Saun will continue to be a senior advisor on financial matters for the firm as Partner, Finance and Accounting; Ratke will continue her oversight of the asset management team and take on leadership of the development and portfolio management functions as Partner, Asset Services.
“Longfellow is at a crucial inflection point in its growth as one of the country’s most effective and knowledgeable developers of life science real estate. Our corporate restructuring will enable our deeply experienced executive team to keep the firm on a forward-looking footing as the need and demand for life science space remains strong in markets across the country,” said Jamison Peschel, Senior Partner at Longfellow. “As a co-founder of the firm with a strong track record of success in creating thriving ecosystems that attract top talent, we could not ask for a better leader than Adam Sichol in steering the company as Longfellow’s CEO.”
“Our firm has arrived at a key moment in its trajectory as we continue to significantly expand our presence in the nation’s thriving hubs for life science research and development. The new structure of our senior management team is designed to allow us to continue thinking big, without losing sight of the granularities of our strategy in each market. An important part of these changes will allow Jamie Peschel, our co-founder and Senior Partner, to further develop our leading life science investment management platform and help drive our strategy,” said Longfellow’s newly appointed CEO Adam Sichol. “We have a strong operational and investment track record and anticipate that the next several years will be a period of rapid growth for the life science industry. We are well positioned to continue delivering comprehensive, high quality services to our tenants doing critical, life-saving work.”
In 2020 alone, Longfellow increased its national portfolio by nearly 1 million square feet. With a portfolio of more than 6 million square feet of life science space and a development pipeline of 4 million square feet located in key biotech markets around the country, the firm is continuing to expand on both the east and west coasts. Since 2018, Longfellow has acquired over $1.2 billion of innovative life science projects in the US and has committed more than $1 billion to the future acquisition and development of life science campuses.
