Houston's Economic Impact Event

Bruce Rutherford is an International Director within JLL Houston’s Office Tenant Representation group, and also serves as the global leader for JLL’s Energy & Sustainability practice group. Drawing on his experience in business consulting, Mr. Rutherford is an expert in creating real estate solutions to complex business problems. He has applied his expertise in tenant representation, lease restructuring, and offshoring to numerous industries including insurance, banking, law, energy, energy services, and telecom. He has managed city and regional master plans totaling more than 30 million square feet of corporate and regional headquarters transactions. Mr. Rutherford’s expansive market experience includes North America and Asia Pacific, including Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, Japan and China, where he has managed JLL business units and client relationships.

Tom has worked for CBRE's Houston, Texas office for over 29 years and has worked in both the user and investor sectors of the marketplace. For the first 15 years of his career, Tom worked with numerous industrial users in the marketplace, from handling the acquisition or sale of corporate facilities to tenant representation in the leasing market on the west side of town. Over the last 11 years, Tom’s client relationships have focused on the investment market. His primary focus for the last 14 years has been on the sale of industrial investment properties, including equity raises for new development, sales of multi-tenant properties and single tenant net leased properties. His years of experience in the leasing market give added insight to understanding the market and is invaluable when working with and educating buyers on the Houston marketplace.

As President and CEO of the Economic Alliance, Mr. Burke is responsible for oversight and direction of all operational and financial considerations of the organization; including leading and directing economic development activities, oversight of membership committees, business and membership development, non-member revenue generation, organizational strategic planning, Board of Directors development, facility management, and working with community partners to nurture relationships with member cities, Harris County, and the Port of Houston Authority.

Christen joined Provident Realty Advisors in 2022 as the Director of Development & Acquisitions. She is the first women Development Partner at Provident and one of the only women developers in the industrial sector of Houston. Christen has developed over 8 million sqft of Class A Institutional industrial facilities. She is a career industrial developer with experience in projects that range from extremely specialized manufacturing facilities to Speculative big box developments. Career highlights include a build-to-suit project for one of the largest e-commerce companies in the country, speculative distributions projects ranging from 100,000 sf to as large as 1,000,000 sf buildings under one roof. Her career consists of development of over 700 acres and $1B worth of transaction value. Christen is the 2022 RedNews Emerging Leader of the Year, RedNews Finalist for Woman of the Year and Bisnow Developing leader for 2021. She holds an MBA from the Freeman School of Business, Tulane University. Christen is a mother of two and wife to a successful real estate entrepreneur. Her and her family are members at Second Baptist Church. Christen is dedicated to giving to Sky High for Children, a very special charity that raises money to fund cancer treatments for kids.

Rob Stillwell, SIOR, CCIM serves as an Executive Managing Director at the Newmark Knight Frank Houston office and has spent his entire career in commercial real estate. Prior to joining NKF, Mr. Stillwell spent over ten years in the third party logistics industry and has a keen understanding of distribution operations and facilities. As a market expert specializing in acquisitions, dispositions, leasing and build-to- suits as well as land sales, Mr. Stillwell focuses the majority of his efforts within the Houston metropolitan industrial market. He is an exceptional strategist and negotiator whose record includes industrial transactions totaling in excess of 5 million square feet and over 6,000 acres of vacant land valued at over $800 million. Mr. Stillwell has gained a wealth of experience, completing complex transactions that include industrial plant sales, terminal sales, port land sales and build-to- suits as well as other traditional consulting assignments and deal structures. His active transaction involvement over the past 20 years, provides clients with the added advantage of exceptional market knowledge and has helped dozens of clients achieve exceptional results over his career. His clients have also benefited from his motivation, innovative marketing and negotiating skills, and along with his positive attitude have assisted him in successfully completing numerous transactions. Mr. Stillwell's high level of commitment and professionalism during his 17-year tenure at the firm have also contributed to his success which gets consistent recognition as a top producer locally and nationally. Mr. Stillwell has a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin where he graduated in 1982. He and his wife, Dawn live in the Clear Lake area with their two sons, Blake and Jacob. Mr. Stillwell is an active Boy Scout Troop mentor/leader as well as a volunteer and supporter of the Houston Food Bank.

Practice Leader: Responsible for day to day operations of the Pediatric clinic, patient satisfaction and quality outcomes. I’ve been in healthcare for 16 years. During my career I’ve worked at The Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Texas Children's Cancer Center, Human Resources, Business Operations for the Neonatal ICU and now at The Center for Children and Women.

Mark K Comstock has more than 30 years of real estate, design, construction, lease administration, transaction and procurement experience. Mr. Comstock is currently Vice President of Real Estate at Emser Tile, where he is responsible for 75 Branch locations and 4 distribution facilities across the United States. Prior to Emser Tile, Mark served as Vice President of Real Estate at Sur La Table. Before Sur La Table, Mark was Vice President of Real Estate and Store Development at REI, Vice President of Real Estate and Facilities at T Mobile, Vice President of Real Estate and Asset Management at Eddie Bauer, Vice President of Real Estate at Egghead Software and Vice President, Retail at Vyzis Development Company. Mark lives in Seattle and is an attorney by training.