Evan Cohen, 28
Vice president of acquisitions at Tourmaline Capital Partners
At first, Evan Cohen took his family’s advice to study engineering because they told him he had “an analytical mind.” But a summer internship with New York luxury developer DHA Capital changed all that.
He cut his teeth after college at Rubenstein Partners, where he had a hand in the firm’s acquisition of Lakefront at Keystone, a 1.1 million-square-foot office park in Indianapolis. The deal began as a tutorial on underwriting, Cohen said, and the goal was simply to get up to speed fast. “We already owned a property a few miles away. It was a practice underwriting for me — a 19-building campus, very difficult to underwrite and roll them into a portfolio,” Cohen said. “We ended up finding that the pricing was attractive, and it was a complementary property to Parkwood nearby.”
Rubenstein ultimately bought the property for $133 million in 2017. Cohen had been at the company for only four months.
Cohen transitioned to a new role as vice president of acquisitions at real estate investment firm Tourmaline Capital Partners in 2021, about six months after the company was founded by Brandon Huffman, Jeff Fronek and Jonathan Jacobs. He’s been instrumental in winnowing Tourmaline’s acquisition pipeline and guiding the company’s younger analysts through deals, from underwriting to the creation of investment collateral, and due diligence processes. This year Tourmaline closed on a $250 million deal to acquire 801 Brickell, an office tower in Miami. The property is 90 percent leased, according to the company, and has helped put Tourmaline on the map in South Florida and beyond.
Cohen said his older brother, Jared, is his biggest mentor.
“I’ve followed in his footsteps starting with sports as a little kid,” Cohen said. “Teachers would call me by his name. Unlike me, he knew he wanted to do something on Wall Street for a long time. He was a big part of the reason I wanted to try something else from engineering. I always had him laying some seeds and being a resource to talk to, and he’s been extremely successful in his career in his own right.”
