Sharm Powell
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Trustee of SmartCentres® since May 31, 2019, Sharm Powell’s 30-year career, spanning real estate, banking, brokerage and investments has provided her with diverse experience from both the principal and intermediary sides of the business. This includes investing for Canada’s largest pension fund, investment banking with a major Canadian bank and investment sales with the largest global brokerage firm.
Ms. Powell has extensive experience in property acquisitions, sales, development and redevelopment (including mixed-use and site intensification projects) and structuring long-term joint ventures. She also has experience in the areas of public and private market financing (including equity, debt, convertible debentures and mortgages) as well as mergers & acquisitions, public market takeovers and corporate restructurings.
Most recently, she was a Director at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and was head of its Real Estate Investments team for Canada. During a portion of her tenure at CPPIB, Ms. Powell also headed CPPIB’s US Retail and its US Multi Family (rental apartment) real estate investments and property portfolio. While at the fund, Ms. Powell studied the impact of e-commerce on shopping centres and the impact of disruptive technologies on real estate. Ms. Powell’s role included a focus on stewardship, environmental, social and governance (ESG) awareness and accountability/transparency to stakeholders.
Prior to joining CPPIB, Ms. Powell worked for eight years on the National Investment Team (Toronto) at CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), the largest commercial real estate services company in the world, and spent eight years at BMO Capital Markets in its investment banking group in Toronto, focusing primarily on public real estate companies and REITs. Prior to this, Ms. Powell worked at McLeanco Realty, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank Securities, providing real estate advisory services to public and private institutional real estate clients.
Ms. Powell holds a BA in Economics from the University of Western Ontario.
