Northern California Women Leading Real Estate Celebration & Cocktail

With more than 20 years of experience in financial reporting and auditing, Youmna has a successful track record managing complex attest engagements with a focus on investment funds and real estate. She has led audits, reviews, compilations and agreed-upon procedures and has a deep understanding in various basis of reporting, various fund structures, investment strategies, allocations and waterfalls. Youmna has supported real estate private equity funds, private debt funds, venture capital funds and the commercial real estate industry. Additionally, she spent the last five years as a lecturer at San Francisco State University teaching financial accounting and managerial accounting courses. Youmna is a certified public accountant, licensed in California. Fluent in Arabic, she received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accountancy from California State University, Sacramento and earned an Executive MBA (EMBA) from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

Cynthia NeSmith-Montanez, a Senior Director in MGAC’s San Francisco office, has over 37 years of experience working on a wide variety of projects, from small tenant improvements to multi-building projects. She has worked on teams big and small for medical office buildings, hospitals, biotech facilities, corporate campuses, hotel renovations, and financial institutions. Cynthia brings deep knowledge of the industry, combining practical knowledge and theoretical understanding developed from her time in both owner’s representation and as a general contractor.

Ashley Breakfield represents large-scale urban developers, real estate investors, renewable energy companies, and private property owners in sophisticated land use and real estate matters. In the land use realm, Ashley specializes in advising clients on Bay Area mid-scale project development strategies, beginning at the project’s inception with evaluating a site for possible uses and strategizing on development plans. She then works to shepherd the project through the administrative process, including evaluating, negotiating and obtaining permits and other entitlements and administrative approvals, and counseling clients on environmental review under both CEQA and NEPA. In the commercial real estate aspect of her practice, Ashley’s transactional background is equally extensive. Her experience includes counseling developers and real estate investors with acquisitions, dispositions, and leasing of office, industrial, retail, mixed use, and agricultural real estate. In addition, Ashley’s real estate practice includes significant experience counseling clients on the negotiation and documentation of various financial arrangements, including acquisition, construction, mezzanine, and permanent financing. Prior to joining Farella’s Real Estate Industry Group, Ashley was a member of our Environmental Law practice group. In that role, she counseled clients on regulatory and compliance matters involving state and federal environmental, land use, and natural resources laws and statutes, and represented clients in state and federal court, as well as before various administrative agencies and boards. This experience is frequently an integral part of her real estate work. Ashley’s approach to her practice is forthright, practical, and results-oriented. Personable and straightforward, she is skilled at negotiating and communicating, emphasizing that both parties would like to get a deal done, and striving, whenever possible, to collaborate in the interest of getting to “yes” a little faster. Combined with her deep, firsthand knowledge of the ins and outs of the Bay Area real estate market, she’s an effective and persuasive advocate for her client’s interests. Ashley served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Edward M. Chen of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, and as a legal intern for the California Attorney General’s Office – Natural Resources Section and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Ashley is the President of Commercial Real Estate Women of San Francisco (CREW SF) (2024) and served on CREW Network’s Diversity & Inclusion Task Force (2020-2021). She is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). Ashley previously served as a co-chair of the Minority Bar Coalition of the San Francisco Bay Area (2019-2022) and as a member of the board of directors for the Bar Association of San Francisco (2021-2022). She is recognized among Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch in the area of Land Use and Zoning Law (2023-2024), Lawdragon Green 500: Leaders in Environmental Law (2023-2024), and Super Lawyers’ Northern California Rising Stars (2015-2021). Ashley earned her J.D., cum laude, from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 2011, where she served as editor in chief of Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. She received her B.A., with highest honors, from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2008.

Stephanie Wood co-founded CoBUILD Construction Services in 2014 with the goal of shifting the general contractor paradigm from combative to collaborative. She uses her Master's in Organizational Leadership to build and nurture a relational culture on the jobsite, in the office, and with clients. Her continuous pursuit of the most effective, neuroscience-backed approaches to employee development allows the entire CoBUILD team to work in tandem to fulfill its mission: to create environments for people to succeed.

Jennifer advises clients on land use and environmental matters arising from the development of commercial, residential, medical, and mixed-use projects in California, with a special emphasis on natural resources issues. She guides private, nonprofit, and public sector entities on all phases of project development from the earliest stages of design through completion, including acquisition, due diligence, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance, entitlement and permitting, and construction. Jennifer is particularly adept at advising on complex natural resources matters, including those concerning endangered species and wetlands under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), the California Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act, the federal Endangered Species Act and its California counterpart (ESA and CESA), and Section 1603 of the California Fish and Game Code (streambed alteration agreements). As part of this work, she regularly manages permitting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, state and local water quality control boards, and the California Coastal Commission, among other federal and state agencies and local governments. Jennifer frequently advises clients (from both the project applicant and landowner side) on conservation easements and other similar mitigation approaches to achieve permit obligations. She also has extensive experience with state housing legislation and local referenda, helping clients anticipate regulatory changes on the horizon. Jennifer has successfully ushered a diverse collection of high-profile projects through the state’s rigorous permitting approval process, including corporate campuses, mixed-use projects, hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and large residential developments. Jennifer’s strong technical foundation, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in environmental science and previous environmental policy experience, aid in her ability to distil nuanced issues into pragmatic solutions. Prior to beginning her legal career, Jennifer established and implemented biodiversity conservation practices for governments and public institutions worldwide as the director of the Conservation International’s Regional Marine Strategies program in Washington, D.C. Before joining Allen Matkins, Jennifer was a partner and head of the land use practice at Stice & Block LLP in Oakland, California.

Prior to joining Eden Housing, Shola served as director of Housing and Community Development for the City of Oakland. As an appointed member of the city’s executive team, she led a team of 74 people and oversaw more than $100M of housing production and preservation capital. Under her leadership, the Oakland’s City Council approved HCD’s two-year Strategic Action Plan, which focused the department’s resources on protecting, preserving and producing affordable housing. During her tenure, the City of Oakland won six state Homekey awards resulting in more than 400 new permanent deeply affordable units. Shola also launched the city’s federal $48M Emergency Rental Assistance program and served more than 3000 Oaklanders who needed immediate rent relief. She also secured the department’s research relationship with Stanford University’s Impact Lab, resulting in new $50K impact grant to develop new technology for residents to access affordable rental housing. Shola has also held executive and senior-level posts at Suffolk Construction, Enterprise Community Partners, HSBC Bank, and HR&A Advisors. In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed her as Chair and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority, where she developed and launched a $10 billion, 10-year development plan, NextGeneration NYCHA. She conducts frequent speaking engagements, including as a panelist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and was selected as one of four national Fellows for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation in June 2021.

Mollie is a Partner of Dostart Development Company (“DDC”), one of the Silicon Valley’s premier commercial real estate developers known for its local expertise, for its leadership in sustainability and transit-oriented design, and for the high quality of its projects and tenants. During the past decade with DDC, Mollie has actively managed nearly 1 million square feet of commercial office development and investment in Silicon Valley. Her responsibilities include leading acquisitions, managing city entitlements, directing leasing, construction, financing and asset management. Prior to joining DDC, Mollie was an investor with Francisco Partners, L.P., a technology-focused private equity firm with $5.0 billion under management, where she was involved in identifying, executing and managing investments across a variety of sectors. Earlier in her career, Mollie worked in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. Mollie is currently a member of the Urban Land Institute and serves on the national ULI Industrial and Office Product Council as well as on the San Francisco Commercial Local Product Council. She is also a member of NAIOP – Silicon Valley and Stanford Professionals in Real Estate (SPIRE). Mollie also serves as treasurer on the Board of Directors of The Representation Project. Mollie received her M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her B.A. in Economics and Latin American Studies, with Distinction, from Yale University.

Stephanie is an Executive Vice President at The Swig Company, where she leads acquisitions, capital markets and capital raising. The Swig Company is a vertically-integrated family office that focuses primarily on office buildings and some multifamily properties. The Swig Family has an 85-year history and currently owns a little under 8MM SF of mostly office properties in New York, Bay Area, Southern California and Seattle. Prior to joining Swig in 2021, Stephanie was previously an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley's real estate investing group, where she spent more than a decade working in acquisitions. At Morgan Stanley, Stephanie acquired and managed core and opportunistic real estate investments worth approximately $2.5 billion across all asset classes. At Morgan Stanley, Stephanie was also an active member of the group’s U.S. sustainability committee and led Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts. Stephanie grew up in Hong Kong and Canada, graduated magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a member of ULI and NAIOP. Stephanie is a Co-Chair of the ULI SF Programs Committee, and sits on the ULI SF Executive Committee, the ULI SF Commercial Local Product Council and a ULI National Product Council.

A California Licensed Architect with twenty-seven years of experience in architectural design, construction, project management in the UC system. Jill was a Senior Project Manager for the UC Davis Campus Design and Construction Management department for 20+ years before moving to UC Davis Health in 2019. She has experience with multiple contract delivery methods, and a wide range of project types including high tech, academic, housing and healthcare. Her current role includes delivering multiple strategic expansion projects for the UC Davis Health System including the California Tower, a 1M square foot replacement bed tower project delivered under a Progressive Design Build contract, an outpatient surgery Center and Clinic, an expansion to the Central Utility Plant, renovation and new construction of hospital Operating Rooms, and off-site Medical Office Buildings serving outpatient needs in the surrounding community. She is leading an integrated team of designers and builders using collaborative contract delivery that will add more than 1M gross square feet to the health campus over the next decade.

Eileen Kong currently serves as Senior Vice President, Asset Management for Kilroy Realty Corporation, overseeing the asset management and leasing of over 6M square feet of Class A stabilized office assets in the San Francisco Bay Area markets. Ms. Kong joined Kilroy in 2011 and has held various positions in Asset Management. Prior to joining Kilroy, Ms. Kong held various asset management roles in which she was responsible for leasing, reposition, and operations with several commercial real estate companies including CAC Real Estate Management (merged with CBRE), Broadreach Capital Partners, Legacy Partners (now Steelwave), and Spieker Properties (merged with Equity Office, now EQ Office). Ms. Kong currently is an active member of various industry groups including ULI, Cornet, BOMA, and NAIOP. She is also a designated CCIM®, RPA®, and a licensed Real Estate Salesperson. Ms. Kong is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance.

Sandy, Vice President and a key part of the West region’s senior management, has been a longstanding member of the Marx|Okubo team for over two decades. She focuses on developing client relationships and business for the West region and is a client manager for national institutional clients. She is also engaged as a firm leader in design and constructability reviews, property condition assessments, owner’s representation, detailed cost analyses, and accessibility reviews. In her roles, she provides solutions to clients’ needs, maintains and strengthens existing client connections, and develops new relationships. Sandy has been working in the fields of architecture and construction for nearly three decades, including design/build work. Her experience has included design development, construction document preparation, and construction administration for the renovation of residential properties, as well as owner’s representation of residential, retail, and office properties. She has performed many forensic investigations focused on exterior envelope issues. Sandy earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of California - Berkeley. She is a licensed architect in California and a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), as well as a Certified Access Specialist (CASp) in California.