Fabrix Makes New Hire To Boost Sustainability Push

Real estate investor and developer Fabrix has appointed Helen Newman as director of sustainable investing.

Newman was previously head of sustainable capital at CBRE, where she worked across the capital markets business, specialising in structuring sustainability performance targets for green real estate loans and developing sustainable finance frameworks to increase capital flows into sustainable assets.

Fabrix said Newman will drive sustainable impact across the business, steering corporate ambition, fundwide and asset-specific strategies and disclosure, and addressing holistic performance across areas like climate adaptation and resilience, whole-life carbon and building performance, and post-occupancy evaluation. 

She will be working alongside Director of Impact Debbie Whitfield, who leads Fabrix’s work across social impact, partnerships, community engagement and external affairs.

Newman is vice chair of the Urban Land Institute UK Sustainability Product Council, is on the CRE Finance Council ESG task group and is a member of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers Knowledge Panel.

Founded in 2016, Fabrix is a London-based, vertically integrated real estate investment, development and management company that owns a real estate portfolio in London and Berlin, including projects under development, with a total gross development value of over £1B. 

Developments include Roots in the Sky, a 430K SF office with the UK’s first rooftop urban forest on the site of the former Blackfriars Crown Court; creative workspace The Binary Building; The Bottle Factory in SE1; and a new final-mile industrial development on a 6-acre site in Bow.

At Atelier Gardens in Berlin, Fabrix is redeveloping a 110-year-old film studio campus into a campus dedicated to impact organisations alongside film and media.

Newman's appointment follows new hires announced in May, with Hayden Scillitoe and Judge Williams joining Fabrix’s investment team from Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, respectively. 

“Everything we do at Fabrix is underpinned by a commitment to sustainability and impact — for the good of our investors, occupiers, communities and the planet," Fabrix CEO Clive Nichol said in a statement. "Sustainable investing is at the forefront of our approach, so it is essential that we have the voice of sustainability at the highest level in our decision-making.”