Michelle Wells
With the intention to be a teacher, Michelle Wells studied English literature at the University of California, San Diego for her bachelor’s degree and pursued education at the University of California, Santa Barbara for her master’s degree.
Michelle Wells, executive vice president of investor relations, Waterton
“I got my first office job just to pay off my student loans, with a plan to go back to teaching,” says Wells. “It was December 1999, and I moved up to San Francisco. I ended up getting a job—certainly above my education background—as a due diligence coordinator and admin for the acquisitions group of AMB.”
While Wells was at AMB Property Corp., now known as Prologis, she fell in love with real estate, the excitement of the deals, and the relationships. She went on to work for other companies, such as AIG Global Real Estate, The Praedium Group, and RREEF, before she joined Waterton in 2013.
Today, Wells serves as the executive vice president of investor relations at Waterton. In this role, she is responsible for fund strategy development and capital raising and oversees ongoing investor and consultant relations, marketing, and internal and external communications.
In February, the company closed its Waterton Residential Property Venture XIV fund with $1.5 billion of equity commitments. Wells led the fundraising effort, which was labeled as one of the largest dedicated multifamily value-add funds in the U.S.
“It feels good to have raised that,” she says. “We are seeing some disruption to pricing here and there, and it’s great to have that kind of buying power as we work through the COVID movement.”
Outside of her traditional job duties, Wells is the founder and chair of Waterton Women, an internal group that meets quarterly for both professional and personal development. She also participates on the firm’s investment and culture committees and is the chair of its management committee.
Wells also has served on the Women in Real Estate’s board, an organization dedicated to providing a networking venue for women in the private equity real estate business, in both San Francisco and Chicago, and was a mentor for the Goldie Initiative, another organization dedicated to women in the commercial real estate industry.
