Dana Rowan has over 25 years of commercial real estate investment and development experience ranging from the formation of smaller entrepreneurial ventures to managing the needs of large institutions.  Prior to founding the Exeter Companies, he served as Senior Vice President, Director of Asset Management and subsequently Director of Portfolio and Corporate Strategy for New Boston Fund, a company with a portfolio of 12 million square feet of properties with an aggregate value in excess of $1.5 billion. In his capacity as a senior executive at New Boston Fund, Mr. Rowan also served as an officer of the firm’s Executive Committee and Investment Committee where he reviewed and presided over all investment and development underwriting for the company. Before joining New Boston Fund, Mr. Rowan was an investment manager with the Prudential Realty Group (Prudential Insurance Company of America), where he was responsible for transactions and asset management for the institution’s $3.0 billion general account and separate account portfolios in New England and New York (excluding New York City). Periodically, he was also commissioned by the Prudential’s corporate office in New Jersey to manage complex investment transactions for the company in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC and periodically assisted with national investment committee underwriting. 

Subsequent to his nationally focused institutional experience, Mr. Rowan directed the real estate workout, restructuring, investment and development advisory practice for The Recovery Group, one of New England’s largest firms specializing in restructuring, crisis management, bankruptcy, asset recapitalization and liquidation. As head of the real estate practice, Mr. Rowan worked through both single assets as well as numerous portfolios in excess of  $250 million per portfolio. He was also a founder and partner in two investment and advisory ventures in New York and Boston that both acquired under performing properties in the US and assisted owners with launching investment funds and capitalizing and developing challenging real estate projects. Over the past 25 years, Mr. Rowan’s development activities have been focused primarily in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Florida, including serving as project manager for the redevelopment of a four-block assemblage of waterfront buildings in New York City’s South Street Seaport Historic District into retail stores, office space, condos, apartments and hotels. This latter project, which involved an eight-year entitlement process, represented but one of several large-scale projects drawing upon Mr. Rowan’s substantial core competency in and affinity for complex public/private joint venture development and redevelopment endeavors. 

 Mr. Rowan is the past national chairman of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the past chairman of the NAIOP Massachusetts Chapter, the recent chairman of the national association’s Tax and Finance Committee and currently serves as Director Emeritus on the organization’s national board as a founding and highly active member of NAIOP’s Urban Redevelopment Forum.  He is also a founding director and recent officer of the NAIOP Research Foundation. In 1998, Mr. Rowan received the national organization’s Distinguished Service Award, recognizing his extraordinary contributions, leadership and commitment to the organization over the prior 15 years.

 Mr. Rowan is an active member of the Urban Land Institute (IOPC Council), the Real Estate Finance Association, the Pension Real Estate Association, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers, the Real Estate Investment Advisory Council and the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI).  In addition, he is a director of the Harvard University Alumni Association, an executive council member and past chairman of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Alumni Association, a recent member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government and an overseer of the Boston Architectural Center.  Mr. Rowan is a graduate of Dartmouth College, has a masters degree in finance and urban economic development from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an MBA from the Boston University School of Management.