The 5th Annual New Jersey State of the Market

As Co-Founder, Managing Principal, and Investment Committee officer of Onyx Equities, LLC, Jonathan Schultz oversees the organization’s investor capital raising initiatives, strategic planning, portfolio management, and business development, as well as formulating overall investment strategy. In addition, Jonathan has shepherded the Receivership Services platform of Onyx Equities which, since its commencement, has fast become the largest of its kind in the tri-state area. Jonathan has been responsible for initiating and closing billions of dollars in leasing and commercial real estate sales and acquisitions during his career to date. Prior to forming Onyx Equities, Jonathan was Founder and President of The Schultz Organization. The Schultz Organization and its affiliates provided commercial real estate brokerage and advisory services to institutions, lenders, private owners, and tenants. The Schultz Organization provided third party clients with leasing and/or management services for over 200 commercial properties totaling over 15 million square feet in the tri-state area. Jonathan is a member of the Metro NY chapter of YPO. He is a Founding Board Member of the “Award Of Courage” Foundation, raising significant funds for Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center, and is a past recipient of their Humanitarian Award. Jonathan has been recognized as one of the “Commercial Brokerage All-Stars,” by Real Estate New York, he was twice named one of “New Jersey’s Most Successful Business Executives under 40” by Business News New Jersey, one of the country’s “Hottest Real Estate Brokers” by Commercial Property News, and one of the “Power Players of the Next Generation” by Real Estate NJ

Alec LeFort is the Regional Director for the East Coast. As one of VTS's founding employees, Alec has been integral in growing and scaling the sales organization, while adding many of the firm's largest customers to the client roster such as TIAA-CREF, Tishman Speyer, Equity Office, Boston Properties, and many more. While helping to oversee VTS's east coast sales operations his team has grown from 2 to 15 (company now has 170 employees total), including outside and inside sales, account management, and customer support, while also becoming VTS highest revenue generating region. Alec is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (CAS '10) majoring in International Relations. VTS, a New York­-based software company, is the leading leasing and asset management platform built to provide real­-time leasing and asset management data to the top landlords and brokerage firms in the world. VTS allows brokers and owners to manage deal activity, identify trends and quantify portfolio performance from their desktop or mobile device. With over 3 billion square feet under management, VTS has been the driving force behind the industry’s shift towards real­-time data and has quickly become the standard in the marketplace.

Ralph Zucker is President of Somerset Development, one of the New York Metropolitan region’s foremost pioneers of New Urbanism and Traditional Neighborhood Design development. Throughout his career, Zucker has worked hands-on in every facet of the building and development process, and has demonstrated a commitment to working with municipalities to create innovative communities based on the principles of New Urbanism. Zucker is perhaps best known for Bell Works, the two-million-square-foot redevelopment of the former Bell Labs property in Holmdel, N.J., where he and the Somerset Development team successfully transformed the iconic Saarinen-designed research facility into a “metroburb,” a term that Somerset coined to describe the suburban building’s revival into a blossoming, downtown-style ecosystem of technology, traditional office, retail, dining and hospitality. Today, Zucker and his team are in the midst of redeveloping The Ameritech Center in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, originally built as the former AT&T research facility, into Bell Works Chicagoland. The 1.65-million square foot building, which has already welcomed retail and office tenants, is quickly transforming into another successful metroburb. Under Zucker’s leadership, Somerset and its projects have earned numerous industry awards and recognition for their contributions to furthering responsible development practices, including the New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award for Wesmont Station, Somerset's 70-acre transit-oriented mixed-use redevelopment located in Wood-Ridge, N.J., where Somerset partnered with NJ TRANSIT to build a brand new train station that provides access to Manhattan.

Jonathan has more than 20 years of real estate investment and management experience. He is responsible for the acquisition and development of all new projects, property management, and leasing of over 12,000 rental apartment units and 6 million SF of office, retail and industrial properties. He oversees the team at KRE Group that is forging ahead with a development pipeline of over 10 million SF of residential and mixed use projects. Jonathan holds a B.A. from New York University and was the recipient of the 2016 SmartCEO Future 50 Award.

Joel Bergstein is the President of Lincoln Equities Group (LEG), one of the Northeast's leading full-service real estate companies. Bergstein joined the company more than 32 years ago, spearheading the organization’s acquisition and development initiatives. He currently leads the firm’s large scale development platform, orchestrating major residential and industrial land development projects in the New York / New Jersey metro area. Bergstein developed LEG’s current operating partner platform, leveraging domestic and international opportunities with private equity and pension funds. Bergstein is a founding partner and active participant in LEG’s $700M European property investment platform. Some of his standout development projects include Halletts Point in Astoria, NY, where LEG transformed a seven acre waterfront site into 2,400 residential apartment units; 5 Giralda in Madison, NJ, a 431,000 square-foot property, that was modernized to become Allergan’s U.S. headquarters; and in early 2018, LEG closed on a 152 acre waterfront site in Bayonne, NJ, where 1.4M square-feet of e-commerce logistics warehousing will be developed to bolster trade with the Port of New York and New Jersey. Lincoln has formed a partnership with Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company to develop a mixed-income residential complex in Crown Heights, NY. It will be a 50/50 market and workforce development project to bring hundreds of needed housing units for middle and working class families in New York City. Bergstein is also leading the development and approval process for 1,500 new residential units in Jersey City including the construction of a light rail station. Bergstein serves on numerous real estate advisory boards and is a speaker and frequent commentator in real estate trade and business media in addition to his philanthropic work.

Jose is a senior managing director and co-office head in the New Jersey office of JLL Capital Markets, Americas. He joins JLL as part of the HFF acquisition and is a member of the firm’s leadership committee. Jose specializes in investment advisory throughout New Jersey, New York and Connecticut and also oversees the day-to-day operations of the firm’s New Jersey office. During the course of his more than 25-year commercial real estate career, he’s been involved in more than $62 billion of office, industrial, retail, multifamily and land sales. Jose started at HFF in March 2010. Before that, he was the executive director of Cushman & Wakefield’s New York area investment sales group where he spent more than 17 years. He began his real estate career as a real estate analyst at PaineWebber, UBS, Inc.