Jessica Hughes - Tishman Speyer

Good Dirt: Conversations with Leaders in Real Estate & Beyond

Jessica Hughes joined Tishman Speyer in 2018 and is currently responsible for the company’s operations in the Boston region including acquisitions, dispositions, asset management, and development. She joined Tishman Speyer from JLL, where she was a Managing Director in the Boston Capital Markets group and a member of JLL’s International Capital Group. Previously, she was a Senior Vice President at Beacon Capital Partners, responsible for acquisitions and dispositions in major U.S. markets, as well as establishing Beacon’s offshore offices in London and Paris. Jessica has a BA in History from Dartmouth College, where she captained the women’s golf team. Having served as President of NAIOP Massachusetts in 2022, she currently serves as Board Chair for the organization. Jess also serves as a board member at the Boston Center for the Arts and is an active participant in many regional charitable endeavors.

Our conversation with Jess begins in her hometown of Lowell, Mass where she had early exposure to the economic development activities and related real estate development which were pushing the city forward. Excelling as a student and as a golfer, Jess shares with us the circumstances around a serendipitous corporate recruiting visit which introduced her to an executive involved in the historic Grand Central Terminal redevelopment project. Jess secured a job with LaSalle Partners in New York working on the final ‘punch list’ of Grand Central- an iconic project at the time that inspires her (and us) to this day.

From there Jess shifted into an analyst role on the capital markets/ investment sales side of the business, a crash course which gave her the toolkit for a career as a ‘deal person’. Moving back to Boston, we discuss Jess’ time with Colliers and Trammell Crow before being recruited to join Beacon Capital Partners, kicking off a transformative chapter in her career which brought Jess to London and other international markets, and finally back home and back to the brokerage side for a productive stint at JLL. The bulk of our discussion is appropriately centered Jess’ move to Tishman Speyer, where she has done a tremendous job in building the firm’s Boston regional platform with a number of the market’s most exciting projects.

We had a blast catching up with Jess and learned a lot about her path. While every path in this business is unique, Jessica’s journey in CRE has been fascinating and we are excited to see what the next decade holds for Jess and Tishman Speyer.

Tom Greeley

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgreeley/

Mike Greeley

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgreeley1/