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Blackstone has tapped another top female executive to run its massive real estate fund, stepping in after the shocking, fatal shooting of its former leader, Wesley LePatner.
Katie Keenan will become the CEO of its $105 billion fund for wealthy individual investors, BREIT, and global head of its Core+ real estate.
She will succeed LePatner, who was tragically killed this summer by a gunman in the lobby of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters at 345 Park. The shooter killed three others before taking his own life.
Keenan, 41, was previously co-chief investment officer for the firm’s real estate debt business and CEO of its publicly traded commercial mortgage real estate trust, Blackstone Mortgage Trust. Tim Johnson, a 14-year firm veteran who heads the firm’s real estate debt business and chairs its mortgage trust’s board, will take on leadership of the mortgage trust.
“Thanks to the dedication of Wesley and many others, BREIT represents some of Blackstone’s finest work,” Keenan said in a press release announcing the leadership changes.
A Harvard graduate, Keenan has been with Blackstone for 13 years, playing multiple roles as the company became one of the world’s largest landlords. In 2015, she worked on the firm’s $23 billion purchase of GE’s real estate, a complex deal that showcased Blackstone’s dominance in real estate.
She was featured in Business Insider’s inaugural rising stars list in 2017, when she was a managing director leading the real estate debt team’s Boston and Washington, D.C. coverage. When she spoke to Business Insider, she said her team had closed over 15 transactions worth $2.75 billion in the previous year.
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By June 2021, she was named CEO and president of the firm’s publicly traded mortgage trust. She worked on deals like financing a $675 million loan to construct the 74-story Waterline tower in Austin. When construction ended in August, the Waterline became the tallest building in Texas.
In June 2024, Keenan was named the co-chief investment officer for BREDS, the firm’s real estate debt strategy.
Before joining Blackstone, Keenan had short stints with Philadelphia-based real estate private equity firm Lupert-Adler and private capital G2 Investment Group LLC, founded by J. Todd Morley, a cofounder of Guggenheim Partners. She began her career at Lehman Brothers as a real estate investment banker.
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