George Zhang, 30
Investment associate at Teacher Retirement System of Texas
George Zhang got his first taste of real estate while studying architecture at Washington University, but it was during his time as a grad student at Harvard that something truly clicked.
“Real estate is the perfect intersection between business and architecture,” he said. “I had an itch to go into finance and really understand its wider ecosystem.”
After working for a Dallas-based developer, Zhang took the opportunity to join Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) three years ago. Today, Zhang is involved with the investment and management of the organization’s $30 billion global real estate portfolio and has contributed to $2 billion in new fund and principal investments.
Notable transactions Zhang has worked on include $300 million in seeding commitments to three new investment funds to provide growth capital and co-GP joint venture capital for real estate operating companies. Business plans for the JVs range from neighborhood retail to New York multifamily portfolios.
The past year has presented plenty of volatility as well as opportunity for the industry, and Zhang has had his work cut out analyzing changing trends. Part of his purview includes the red-hot data center sector, with TRS having committed around $1 billion to data centers within its real estate portfolio alone.
“There are cyclical trends as well as sectoral shifts,” Zhang said. “AI is moving very fast and a direct impact is definitely being felt on the data center demand side, but there’s a question of what it means for traditional real estate sectors like office — so, are people still going to value in-person office experiences? Thinking about these second-order shifts that could happen has been a big focus.”
TRS serves around 2 million teachers across Texas, and TRS’s mission is a big part of what Zhang loves most about his role.
“Every single investment decision we make will directly impact the check the teachers get,” Zhang said. “Frankly, I didn’t have as deep of an appreciation for this until I joined TRS. We manage about $200 billion and our target return is about 7 percent. In order to meet our return target, we have to make $50 million in extra returns each trading day. So that’s what inspires me — our mission, the scale of the impact, and also the intellectual challenge of it all.”
