Clayton Ross, 30

“I was shining shoes all throughout college, doing my math homework, and then shining shoes and polishing brass for inspection,” said Clayton Ross of his time at The Citadel, South Carolina’s public military college. “In order to get through knob year [the first year, when cadets, among other challenges, shave their heads] you have to have a lot of vision. So I’d say military school teaches perseverance and attention to detail.”

And then an internship at a real estate brokerage after his junior year introduced him to the joys of developing business models, and he pivoted heavily into finance.

The combination of analytics and his military training have stood him in good stead at JLL, where he is on its capital markets team. In 2023, Ross and his cohorts were tasked with the selldown of a $1.4 billion piece of Signature Bank’s portfolio. The “multi-book,” as he called it, consisted of performing multi-family loans, and the team ended up placing it with three separate buyers. 

“That one was heavy in the numbers, and then having conversations with market participants,” Ross said. “A lot of sleepless nights with that one.”

Of course, he was going to night school at the same time, finishing his MBA at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business just last year.

Ross has recently been acutely focused on lender finance. A specialty is note-on-note financing, which he described as a “growing lane for the industry.” He’s also proud of having helped advise JLL alumnus Mike Tepedino — “that’s ‘Tango Echo Papa’ ” he tells CO — arrange a joint venture for his real estate lending firm, Blue Light Capital. Many details are under a nondisclosure agreement, but the raise amount of $500 million isn’t.

Ross described his activities as a juggling act, balancing academics (“If you’re not learning, you’re not relevant in this market”), work and relationships. For a numbers guy, he has a high awareness of, and dedication to, his relationships with his clients.

“It’s part of wanting to do a good job.” Ross said. “Just because you win a piece of business doesn’t mean the job’s over, right?”