ULI Japan NEXT members presenting include: - Jun Saito (Pembroke Real Estate Japan) - Yuki Nishijima (Touchstone Capital Management) - Toru Hasegawa (Nomura Real Estate) - Tim Gregersen (Cushman & Wakefield) - Takashi Matsubasa (Sanko Office Management)

Noriko Hayashi (TOKYU LAND CORPORATION) will be speaking WLI members about the current state of Japanese retail.

Dan Klebes is a Managing Partner and Head of Japan at BentallGreenOak, based in Tokyo. Dan is Representative Director of GreenOak Investment Management K.K. Dan has over 30 years of experience in the Japanese real estate market, as an investor and investment banker. Prior to joining GreenOak, a BentallGreenOak predecessor firm, Dan founded and led GTO Capital Management, an investment firm where he advised and co-invested with clients in the United States and Japan. Previously, as Chief Investment Officer for Japan for Aetos Capital Asia, he led a Tokyo-based real estate team of over 100 professionals and grew assets under management by over $6 billion. Klebes started his career in 1987 at Goldman Sachs and spent 10 years as a real estate investment banker in Tokyo and New York. In 1997, he founded Goldman Sachs’ Japanese Real Estate Principal Investment Area, where he led the acquisition of over $5 billion of Japanese real estate-related investments and helped build Goldman’s property investment and asset management operations from startup to over 200 professionals. Dan holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford University. He has lived in Japan for more than 15 years and is fluent in Japanese.

Katsunori Sago joined SoftBank Group in 2018 as the Group’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. He oversees multiple functions and businesses domains within the Group with a special focus on investment strategies for both the SoftBank Vision Fund and SoftBank Group’s balance sheet investments. He played a pivotal role in the efforts to transform the Group into a global investing powerhouse with a vision to lead the AI information revolution. Before joining SoftBank Group, Sago was the chief investment officer at Japan Post Bank. He was tasked with revamping the management of the company’s $1.9 trillion investment portfolio amid ultra-low interest rates. One of his many achievements include the building of a strong private equity investment team. He started his career at Goldman Sachs Japan in 1992 where he fulfilled various roles including deputy president and vice-chairman.

Sam Zell is a global, industry-agnostic entrepreneur and investor. He has a long track record of turning around troubled companies and assets, leading industry consolidations, and bringing companies to the public markets. His current investments are in logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, energy and real estate. Sam is the Chairman of Equity Group Investments, the private investment firm he founded more than 50 years ago. He also chairs five companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange: Equity Residential, an apartment REIT; Equity LifeStyle Properties, a manufactured home community and resort REIT; Equity Commonwealth, an office REIT; Covanta Holding Corporation, an international owner/operator of energy-from-waste and power generation facilities; and Equity Distribution Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) targeting opportunities to apply technological advancement within the industrial industry. Sam also founded and chaired Equity Office Properties Trust, the largest office REIT until its 2007 sale for $39 billion in the largest leveraged buyout at the time. In addition, he introduced the first Brazilian and Mexican real estate companies, respectively, to the New York Stock Exchange through Equity International, a second private investment firm he founded to focus on real estate-related businesses in emerging markets. Sam is an active philanthropist with a focus on entrepreneurial education. Through the Zell Family Foundation, he has led the sponsorship of several leading entrepreneurship programs, including: the Zell/Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; the Zell Fellows Program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; and the Zell Entrepreneurship Center at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC). The Zell Global Entrepreneur Network (ZGEN) unites the students and alumni of these programs and actively provides them with connections, opportunities, mentorship and support. Sam also sponsors the Samuel Zell/Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Real Estate Center. He holds a JD degree and a BA from the University of Michigan. Sam was recognized in 2017 by Forbes as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds. That same year, Sam debuted his book, Am I Being Too Subtle? (Penguin RandomHouse), in which he shares fundamentals and philosophies that made him a self-made billionaire.

Naoki Yoshida is the President & CEO (Representative Director) of Pan Pacific International Holdings Corporation (PPIH). He was recruited by then President, Takao Yasuda, and joined PPIH in 2007 as General Manager of Overseas Business Headquarters and President of Don Quijote (USA) Co., Ltd. He was appointed as a board member (Director) in 2012, and subsequently promoted to Senior Managing Director in 2013. After holding a broad range of responsibilities in the Chairman's Office, Finance, Legal & Compliance, M&A and Employee Management amongst others, he was appointed as Representative Director & CAO (Chief Administrative Officer) & Senior Managing Director in 2018 and then as President & CEO in 2019. As CEO, he has been leading PPIH and initiating key new strategies such as PMI with Uny, projects for further empowerment and delegation at all levels of employees and managers, cultivation of leaders for the next generations, digitalization of the group through the Marshmallow Initiative including AI based pricing, and others. He also serves as a Board member of Asia Crime Prevention Foundation and is an Executive Member of Keidanren (Japan Business Federation). Prior to joining PPIH, Yoshida worked for a renowned consulting firm and financial institutions. He graduated from International Christian University with a BA in 1988, and earned an MBA from INSEAD in 1995.