KKR Names Sam Caven, Marshall Nevins New Co-Heads of Acquisitions

KKR has appointed Sam Caven and Marshall Nevins co-heads of acquisitions for the Americas, Commercial Observer can first report. 

Nevins joins KKR from Blackstone, where he was a managing director, leading investments across multiple real estate strategies. Caven has led investment activity across KKR’s U.S. real estate funds since 2024 and previously spent 13 years at Starwood Capital. 

The new co-heads now join Brett Kelly and Michael Osborne, co-heads of KKR’s real estate equity asset management business, with all four reporting up to Justin Pattner, head of equity for the Americas. 

“We pride ourselves on continuing to evolve, and sometimes the more profound changes around businesses present themselves as people-related changes,” Pattner said. “We’ve been investing, harvesting, and trying to figure out what our organizational structure should look like on a go-forward basis so that we can maintain performance and grow well into the future, and this was a great time to make those changes.” 

Nevins’ first day was August 12, and so those changes are now up and running. 

“As a firm, we’re big believers in if you can find the right co-head model — because people have different perspectives and different strengths — and as long as you have the right organizational structure and the right incentive model, you can be in a situation where one-plus-one is greater than two,” Pattner said. “So, it’s a case of the right time, right people, and we’re pretty excited.” 

San Francisco-based Caven brings 19 years of experience to his new role. At Starwood, he led acquisitions and dispositions of office, industrial and residential assets and also worked on the formation of Starwood Waypoint Homes and Starwood Real Estate Income Trust. Prior to Starwood, Caven worked on capital raising and M&A advisory for both public and private real estate companies at JMP Securities. 

“I’d known Sam for the better part of eight or nine years and had been looking to bring him on board for half that time,” Pattner said. “The opportunity presented itself a few years ago, and Sam really fit the mold of what we were looking for. He has been one of the more prolific investors in the Western region of the United States, but his range is well beyond just regional. He’s been with us now for about 18 months and it’s been super impressive. He’s a phenomenal culture carrier and a great brand ambassador.” 

When it came to a counterpart for Caven, KKR was looking for somebody based in New York who had a lot of the same range. Enter, Nevins.

“He’s touched a lot of different sectors and lots of different types of transactions,” Pattner said. “He’s a thematic thinker, a good complement to Sam, and he was ready for that next step of co-running an acquisitions business.” 

Nevins has 17 years of experience under his belt that includes sourcing, underwriting, and executing investments across property sectors as well as market cycles. He got his career start at J.P. Morgan before moving to Northwood Investors, where he focused on the firm’s real estate investment activities before, most recently, spending the last five years at Blackstone. 

KKR’s Americas equity business is a key growth driver for KKR’s broader real estate platform, and with the new co-heads of acquisitions now in place the firm is well positioned to capitalize on market opportunities ahead. 

“We are largely thematic investors, but in times of market evolution there’s also room for investing in dislocation,” Pattner said.  

The growth of the 75-plus cohort is one of the themes KKR has been leaning into. 

“We’ve probably been one of the most prolific investors in the senior housing space, in terms of private market participants,” Pattner said. “Then, there’s productivity, which is anything from digital to digital-adjacent investing. There’s everything associated with the industrial defense complex — whether it’s onshoring, whether it’s manufacturing, defense-related, etc. — and then we’re investing behind housing affordability.” 

While those are the broader thematics KKR has been investing behind, “the way that we’re approaching investing has changed, just given how prices have moved, or where we believe we are in the cycle of those different trends,” Pattner said. “Then, there’s a healthy amount of what we call opportunistic investment opportunities that fall outside of those trends — not necessarily opportunistic in risk profile — where maybe a company needs capital, or there’s a sector or a geography that is a little bit misunderstood in our minds, and so that’s really where we’re we’re focusing. And look, in the environment that we’re in right now, where rates have stayed higher for longer, I’d say we’re finding more and more interesting opportunities out there.” 

Pattner joined KKR Real Estate at the inception of the platform 15 years ago. It’s now grown to $84 billion in assets under management with 130 professionals around the world, and its 15th birthday was a good chance to reflect on the platform’s progress before taking its next steps, Pattner said. 

“We feel really good about where the team stands today,” Pattner said. “I don’t know that we’ve ever felt this good in the 15 years that I’ve been here, and just the fact that we have the caliber of talent that we’ve been able to attract from the Starwoods, the Blackstones, the Carlyles — this is just on the investing side, not even including our operating platforms — I think is a testament to that,” Pattner said. “We’re always open to opportunistically bringing in very high quality talent when it’s available, but we’re much more focused on the team that we’ve got.” 

As for what enticed Pattner to KKR a decade-and-a-half ago? 

 “What stood out to me is the quality of the people here, the ability to do very interesting things — a variety of different things — and a constant desire to deliver performance and earn the right to grow and scale,” Pattner said. “That’s what defines KKR as an institution and why you see folks like myself here for 15 years and looking forward to the next 15.” 

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