Jaime Zadra

Jaime Zadra, a former tennis player at Pomona College, has played an integral role in helping PGIM largely hold serve with U.S. originations despite facing an onslaught of market headwinds.

While PGIM’s total origination volume is off by about 20 percent so far this year from a big 2022, when the company executed $15 billion, its core lending strategy nationally is on pace to meet and even exceed its 2023 goal, according to Zadra. She oversees a team of around 20 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago that originated $4 billion in loans in 2022.  

“We’ve been able to source deals across the spectrum,” Zadra said. “We have a lot of breadth and depth to our business that has always been a competitive advantage and is an even bigger differentiator in the current market environment.” 

Some of PGIM’s noteworthy deals from the past year include supplying a $455 million debt package to Alere Property Group to refinance an eight-building industrial portfolio in Southern California. Under its core plus lending program, Zadra’s team also facilitated a $90 million debt package on a new apartment complex from LaTerra on L.A.’s east side to refinance a previous construction loan and carry the property through lease-up to stabilization. 

Since arriving at PGIM in 2004, Zadra has originated more than $15 billion in loans across property sectors and capital structures. Zadra was named managing director in 2019 after 10 years as an executive director, where she led the debt originations team for Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. She has taken on an expanded credit role since the promotion, including responsibility for PGIM’s Midwest region out of Chicago and hiring a new originator in L.A. to focus on structured originations in the Western U.S. 

“I’m always transitioning, and there’s always something new to learn or contribute, and it’s a big part of the reason why I’ve been at PGIM for so long,” Zadra said. “We have so much variability to what we do in terms of capital sources.”