Ben Curtiss.
Ben Curtiss, 33
Vice president of acquisitions at Kushner Companies
It wasn’t exactly business as usual when Ben Curtiss graduated from Boston College in 2010. Investment banks and consulting firms had all but stopped recruiting.
“It used to be that every name you could imagine would be on campus signing up hundreds of kids,” said Curtiss, who grew up in Hoboken, N.J. “The summer before my senior year in 2009, there were only three or four firms taking maybe one intern. There were no opportunities.”
But Curtiss was lucky. Through a family friend, he secured an interview with Kushner Companies for an internship. He got the job.
“I was very fortunate,” he said. “So, I worked as hard as I could. I love the people that I work with.”
A decade later, Curtiss is still with Kushner and now acting as vice president of acquisitions.
“We all wear a lot of hats,” said Curtiss, who oversees a team of 15 acquisitions professionals. “I look for new investment opportunities up and down the capital stack. I work with our team to put together underwriting. I source new relationships with our investor partners and lenders. I negotiate joint venture documents and loan agreements. But a lot of my time is spent on deal execution.”
Needless to say, if Kushner Companies has done a deal in the last decade, Curtiss has touched it.
For instance, he had “a pronounced role” in the $1.2 billion acquisition of the Pillar portfolio last year — which consisted of 16 multifamily communities across Maryland and Virginia. He worked on Kushner’s most high-profile acquisition: 666 Fifth Avenue. He also worked on the $150 million refinancing of the Puck Building in SoHo.
“When I started, it was the depths of the economic crisis,” he said. “That was my introduction to real estate. Since then, I have worked with Vornado, with Brookfield. I worked on it all. I am very proud to have been there.”
