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Kenan Institute 2024 Grand Challenge: Business Resilience
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Market-Based Solutions to Vital Economic Issues

Donald Cogsville

CEO, The Cogsville Group, LLC

Donald Cogsville is the chief executive officer of The Cogsville Group, LLC, a New York City-based, private equity real estate investment firm founded in 2007. The Cogsville Group launched its first fund, Cogsville Capital Partners Fund I, to pursue distressed real estate transactions. This fund is invested in $3 billion of distressed commercial and residential real estate, representing over 4,000 assets in 49 states. The firm’s asset management experience and financial strength have been recognized by the federal government’s rigorous evaluation process through numerous transactions. Over the past three years, the firm has bid on more than $10 billion of distressed assets with over a dozen institutional operators and investors. The Cogsville Group’s current portfolio comprises residential, retail, lodging, office, multifamily, land, industrial and special purpose properties.

Cogsville began his career as an attorney in the Structured Finance Group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Subsequently, Cogsville joined the Leveraged Finance Group at Merrill Lynch as an investment banker. In New York and London, he executed more than $20 billion worth of structured real estate transactions in connection with high yield debt and credit facilities for homebuilders and other industries. He was captain of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill men’s soccer team, a member of the 1988 U.S. national soccer team and a first round draft pick for the 1990 MISL champion San Diego Sockers. Additionally, he serves or has served on the Board of Visitors of UNC Chapel Hill, The New York Urban League, Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Amsterdam News Editorial Board. He also founded the non-partisan voter registration initiative, Citizen Change. Cogsville received a bachelors’s from UNC Chapel Hill and a JD from Rutgers University.