BGO’s Julie Wong Can Raise Serious Capital — and Raise People Up

It’s 1979 and Julie Wong’s first day of school in the U.S.

Wong, 7 years old at the time, sits on the swings outside the unfamiliar building, holding a small orange that she’d brought along as a snack. She doesn’t speak any English, and doesn’t know what time her new school starts, and so she waits, and waits. Finally, someone from the principal’s office comes outside to escort her to her first-grade class, which — as it turns out — had already begun. 

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“When you don’t have the code, when you don’t know what’s happening, when you haven’t been there before, you need to figure it out by yourself,” Wong said. “How I grew up really informs who I am as a person today and my approach to things both professionally and personally.” 

Today, Wong is BGO’s global head of capital raising with a resume that includes the firm’s recent $5.1 billion Asia Fund IV, the largest closed-end fund raise in the company’s history. But, between then and now,  she had much to figure out, and master. 

A first-generation Chinese American, Wong’s parents emigrated to the U.S. in search of opportunity, opening a Chinese banquet restaurant in the San Diego area. She remembers life in a new country took “a lot of navigating” as the big sister to her young brother, who was 3 at the time, but her experience was ultimately shaped by “a lot of fortunate encounters and circumstances.”

Wong was placed in the first grade at her new school because she didn’t speak English, and that was the only language the classes were taught in. Her parents didn’t speak English at home, and she recalls a sense of “sink or swim” at the time. 

“I was a very quiet elementary student for three years,  just listening and absorbing,” she said. “It’s amazing how kids have a huge capacity to learn, and education became a personal mission for me because it transformed my life and opened so many doors.”

She attended large public schools — there were 727 people in her high school graduating class — and worked hard enough at her studies that she would eventually attend Harvard University. 

“Everyone assumes that I had tiger parents, but my parents are the opposite of tiger parents,” Wong said and laughed. “They were busy running the restaurant, and when they got home I’d still be in the living room doing homework. My dad would come downstairs and say  ‘Turn off the lights! It’s 2 a.m., go to bed!’ but I had too much work to do, and so I just got it done on my own.”

When she got into Harvard, Wong’s mom asked her, “How did you even think to apply? How did you even do that?!” It’s something Wong attributes to “the grace of really fantastic teachers” and the high school counselor who pulled her aside and said, “You’re ranked top of your class, you could go anywhere you like, and should apply to these schools.”

“It’s one of the great things about living in America,” Wong said. “Coming from the very bare bones start that we had as a family — we didn’t have a car, and so we’d walk to the grocery store then walk home with grocery bags, and the 7-year-old, the 4-year-old, everyone played a part — to the point where I got to be sitting in one of the best schools in this country, and working on Wall Street. But it’s because of how many doors my third- and fourth-grade teachers, my high school English teacher and the counselor, opened for me. I always get teary-eyed when I talk about it.” 

Start spreadin’ the news

After Harvard, Wong moved from her home base of California to New York City to attend Columbia Business School. She planned to stay two years.  

Her goal was to work in finance, and specifically investment banking, but the timing was suboptimal. In the aftermath of 9/11, Wall Street jobs were hard to come by. Morgan Stanley would generally hire eight to 10 associates a year from business schools, but in 2003 they hired just two. Still, she persevered and networked and was finally introduced to Marc Childress and Jim Flaum in Morgan Stanley’s commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) team.

“I was worried because I didn’t know what CMBS even stood for at the time,” Wong said, laughing. “But, soon, there I was taking a meeting with these managing directors, and it turned out to be a really good conversation.”

Childress told Wong, “You sound like an investment banker,” but with no investment banking roles available at the firm at the time, they agreed to stayed in touch while Wong continued to search for jobs, with corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as her second choice. She received an offer at McGraw Hill to do M&A and called Childress.

“I said, ‘I got a job offer,’ and he said, ‘Wait, you should come work with me at Morgan Stanley! I can’t get you into the investment banking division, but I can get you into CMBS.’ ” 

Wong had eight interviews in one day with the CMBS team. She knew she’d enjoy the intense quantitative nature of CMBS, but the real estate part was something that she hadn’t quite planned on. “Then I started, and I just fell in love with it,” she said. “It was love at first model.” She fully engrossed herself, working 100-hour weeks at Morgan Stanley’s CMBS desk, and there was ample work for her to tackle. After all, in 2003, CMBS was on fire and Morgan Stanley was the largest CMBS shop globally. 

When the banking side picked up again, the firm’s investment banking group asked her to interview with them. “I went back to my boss and mentor, and said, ‘Hey, Marc, I had this conversation…’ and I was really worried. But, truly, he was fantastic. He said ‘Hey this is what we wanted, this is what we talked about.’ I had his full blessing and support and he opened the door for me. I’ve been really blessed, and I think it’s so important to pay that back for others, because everybody needs that helping hand at some point.” 

After a booming market during her first few years at Morgan Stanley, by the late aughts Wong was navigating the depths of the Global Financial Crisis.

“There was this constant pounding sound due to people running in the hallways,” she recalls. “Everything had to happen urgently. We were all constantly rushing to a meeting, running to the printer. Everything felt urgent and dire and important.” 

Morgan Stanley’s office at 1585 Broadway was directly across the street from the Lehman Brothers building, meaning there was no way of escaping the market fallout by looking out of the window or getting some air. “It was incredibly intense, just so many impacts from the so-called butterfly effect,” she said.

The day Lehman failed in September 2008, news trucks flooded the street outside the building’s doors, with share prices nosediving across investment banks. But it didn’t end there.  

“There were so many implications for the real estate portfolios that Morgan Stanley was managing,” Wong recalled. “We, as investment professionals, had to assess or manage through it and, at the same time, consider where the new opportunity set was. It was a massive lesson in so many things, and I was so fortunate as Morgan Stanley was, at that time, a 20-year-old real estate platform and I was working on issues in the portfolio that spanned those 20 years.”

Green roots

Sonny Kalsi had spent 18 years at Morgan Stanley starting in 1991, including 10 years in Asia as its global head of real estate investing. He left the firm in 2009 and had a yearlong noncompete agreement. “I spent the year trying to be a better father and husband, but all the while plotting and thinking about what I might do next,” he said. 

Kalsi had known Wong at Morgan Stanley and recalls an overarching feeling of “I need her to be on my team” from the first time he met her. “I saw someone who had a very high IQ, clearly, but also a high EQ. That’s an extremely rare combo,” he said.  

He doesn’t remember who reached out to whom once he co-founded GreenOak, but the desire for Wong to join Kalsi in his new real estate investment company was mutual. She came aboard  in September 2010. 

“Julie was one of the first 10 employees,” Kalsi said. “We brought her in right off the bat, saying, ‘We want you to lead our capital-raising effort.’ She was a senior person on her team at Morgan Stanley,  not the leader of that team, but when we put the business together, I took the view of ‘Who do I think is really talented, and who do I think can really grow into this position over the next 10 or 20 years, and be someone who I would have a lot of confidence in and trust in as a partner?’ And it was Julie.” 

On one hand, the role was a step up role for Wong. “On the other hand, she left a platform that had about $100 billion under management for one that had zero,” Kalsi said and laughed. 

“We were a true startup at the time,” Wong said, but all of the GreenOak founders — Kalsi, John Carrafiell and Fred Schmidt — were former Morgan Stanley colleagues, and so the band was back together, in a way. They had a collective vision for building a firm that would take the best of where each person came from, but in a vehicle they had the opportunity to shape without any constraints. 

Wong likens those early days at what’s now BGO to assembling a team of athletes. 

“They were recognizing talent, and trusting that that talent and ability, that innate instinct, would pick up the subject matter, would be able to execute and take on whatever was assigned to them because of that talent,” Wong said. “In that way, being ‘athletic’ was more important than having done exactly this role before.” 

Case in point: In Wong’s prior job at Morgan Stanley, she wasn’t a capital raiser.  “I’m the nerd behind the spreadsheet,” she said. “Selling was not my thing.” 

But for GreenOak to launch, it had to raise money, and Kalsi told Wong: “Let’s get to a billion dollars, and then you can do whatever you want. You can continue being an investor or open our China office.” So, Wong dug in and focused on helping the co-founders raise capital, explaining GreenOak’s strategy and establishing reasons to entrust capital with the new platform. 

“My priority was, let’s get GreenOak off the ground,” she said.  “Focusing on capital raising was fascinating because we worked with amazing investors, but for every yes that you get, you’re turned down nine times.” 

Kalsi credited Wong’s “huge amount of intellectual curiosity” for why she excelled in her capital-raising role. “She’s a bit of a geek and loves nerding out on problem solving and finding out, ‘What’s the opportunity here? What can we be doing differently or better?’ So I think that’s what draws her to new challenges.” 

By year three, Wong’s commitment had deepened even further. She recognized the value not only in being able to understand where GreenOak’s investment partners were focused, but also what was important to them and what they were trying to achieve. “I’m the one who represents our partners within the firm, their interests, their priorities. I’m their voice, and so it’s important to me to understand and hear it objectively, and not put a filter in a lens,” she said. 

Kalsi said that today when the BGO team has a discussion internally, Wong steadfastly represents clients’ interests and brings their needs and perspective to that table. “I really appreciate that,” he said. “I’ve worked with a lot of investor client coverage people and salespeople, and it’s not the norm, it’s just not their M.O.”

People trust Wong because of it, Kalsi said: “They know that she takes a long term view on their relationship, that she will not do anything that is not, in her view, in their best interest.” 

Jamie Behar retired from the industry in 2016, but was working in General Motors’ pension and savings plan investment group when she first met Wong. GM had made a sizable investment in the Morgan Stanley real estate platform and — fast forward to 2010 — Behar’s team also ended up making a sizable investment with GreenOak. It was there she truly got to know Wong. 

“When you’re on the buy side of the world, you deal with a lot of investment teams trying to raise capital. My experience over time had been that the people that were doing the marketing of the funds sometimes were not as well versed in the investment strategy and markets,” Behar said. “Julie stood out as someone who you could talk with, who fully understood the market and the strategy that her firm was going to employ, and why the timing was right.”

In the wake of the GFC, Wong also showed rare humbleness for someone in her profession, Behar said: “Anyone who had invested in the mid-2000s took some lumps and bumps. We all thought we were Superman until we got hit in the stomach and the head. Julie had humility in terms of her approach to the business, and that was important.” 

Behar describes Wong as being very perceptive. “She wants to see you comfortable, and she puts you at ease. But she’s also not missing a beat,” Behar said. “She’s catching every single mannerism, every single word, and she’s astutely paying attention to the whole dynamic.” 

A global investor who has invested alongside BGO but couldn’t speak on record due to confidentiality reasons noted Wong’s ability to wear many hats, and swap them quickly. 

“It’s what distinguishes Julie,” they said. “If she needs to look at deals, she will look at deals. If she needs to provide investor solutions, she’ll do that. If she needs to build relationships with somebody at a personal level, then she’ll happily do that as well. She’s always been kind. When she was junior, she was pretty fierce. But now she’s in more of a mentoring role, and I think that’s great because it speaks to how much power she has and how much influence she has with the junior pipeline coming through. So many people look to her for friendship and advice today.”

Wong is also skilled in making others’ lives easier, the investor said, describing a sidecar investment vehicle that Wong helped their firm set up.  “It’s not supposed to be a super complicated thing, but with us being an international organization with several moving parts, we had faced challenges, and we were not able to get that specific investment type done before,” they said. “Now we have done many similar vehicles, but, for a really long time, BGO was the only company that we were able to successfully cross the finish line with.  When you work with Julie, the execution is always just very seamless.” 

Mentor maven

Just as she has had several mentors herself, Wong today mentors others in the industry, including Yi-Shan Huang, a managing director at BGO who joined the firm’s Hong Kong office in 2021 and now works out of New York.  

“No one ever gives me advice like Julie does,” Huang said. “Her insights and her perspective are so valuable, but the way she gives the advice is straight to the point. She’s no nonsense. For her to get to where she is today, and especially during that time period when she was cutting her teeth, must have been super, super difficult. But now she has all this incredible experience to share with others.” 

When travel was difficult due to COVID, Wong flew to BGO’s Hong Kong office, and at the top of her agenda was organizing a women’s lunch with Huang’s help. Huang said, ‘‘Absolutely!”

“She’s so busy, but she specifically wanted to speak with the women in Hong Kong, largely to tell them, ‘This is what’s happening with us globally,’ and make a connection with them,” Huang said. “It comes from a very genuine place to want to do these things. She goes out of her way to make people feel seen, but especially the people who typically aren’t seen.”

Wong is part of BGO’s Asian network, which provides Asian employees with the opportunity to connect with more senior people within the Asian network.  “Julie reached out to me to say, ‘I want to do this’ because Asians often face different types of struggles in finance, which she understands,” Huang said. “We work hard and hope we’re going to get noticed. But it just doesn’t work that way. So I connected her with someone who works in our technology group in Toronto, and he called me after and said, ‘Oh, my God, Julie’s amazing.’ ”

The BGO approach of valuing diversity of thinking and viewpoints very much comes from the top down; not only is Wong a woman and Asian, but Kalsi is the son of Indian immigrants who grew up in Tennessee. “I jokingly say I didn’t even realize I was a minority until I got to university,” Kalsi said. “Then I joined Wall Street and I realized that I was different. There weren’t a lot of people who looked like me back then and I felt like I probably had to work harder, not just because of the color of my skin, but because I didn’t have a network on Wall Street. Later in my career  I started saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, there aren’t that many women, and there also isn’t that much diversity.’ ” 

Kalsi saw some of the tough decisions his wife, a lawyer, and his sister had to make professionally when they wanted to start families (which later prompted him to implement 12 months of parental leave at BGO, and encourage his peers to follow suit). 

“The combination of all that made an impression on me. When we started GreenOak in 2010, I was very intentional in saying ‘Diversity is a strength’ because I really firmly believe that,” Kalsi said. “But I also felt if I didn’t give people with different backgrounds an opportunity, then who would? It’s become more and more intentional over time. I would say now it’s definitely part of the company credo. It’s something we care a lot about and part of the reason our C-suite is so diverse, but I also think they’re, by far, the best people for the jobs.”

Who runs the world? 

According to a 2025 study by CREW Network, an advocacy group for women in commercial real estate, women comprise 38 percent of the industry today. 

“I still remember how few women there were around the table when I joined finance,” Wong said. “Thirty-eight percent today honestly sounds high to me, but if you look at more senior positions, I’m sure that number is even smaller, whereas, personally, I think women should rule the world. So I’m astounded and disappointed that it’s still the case.” 

Wong has now been at BGO for 16 years. “People look at that and go, ‘Wow, why have you stayed so long?’ And the reason is the firm, the culture and the environment,” she said. “The underpinnings to that is how fair and equitable it is in the creation of opportunity. We have senior women in investment, in portfolio management, and then there’s my role as global head of capital raising. It’s something that we really focus on, but the way the big difference is made is in the minutiae. Everyone needs to play a part in addressing this.” 

Wong’s experiences, and responses to those experiences, have remained with her throughout her career, like that first day of school. “Having that background makes me so aware of how to navigate a situation, whether it’s a dynamic, a firm, a culture or your career decisions, to be able to set yourself up for success,” she said. “Because of the hard work that I have had to do,  I now want to make that work shorter and faster for the people who come after me. But the thing I really want to do is to have men speak to why that number is 38 percent and what they’re doing to ensure more women are represented within their leadership ranks. We need to all own it, collectively. 

“Where I am today, I owe tremendously to men,” Wong added. “But, today, I’m swimming upstream, and we have to open those doors for whoever’s coming up behind us, and that’s done through awareness and personal ownership of making that happen.  It’s not just women’s responsibility to raise women. It’s everyone’s responsibility.”

Cathy Cunningham can be reached at ccunningham@commercialobserver.com.