Donald D. Sheets

Donald D. Sheets

Executive Director 
Senior Lecturer  

Donald D. Sheets has two dozen years of leadership experience on Wall Street across several investment management firms, one of which he founded nearly a decade ago and recently sold. 

In conjunction with his recent dual appointments to both the faculty of Harvard University and as Executive Director of The Ohio State University Center for Real Estate, he concluded his roles as Managing Director and member of the Management Committee at Broadshore Capital Partners - a subsidiary of Guardian Life Insurance.  While at Broadshore, his team underwrote, serviced, and resolved investments on behalf of its cornerstone investors comprised of Harvard Management Company, Bain Capital Real Estate, and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.  He previously was a Partner and Managing Director at Clarion Partners upon its acquisition of AlumCreek Holdings, a private equity platform that he founded and scaled.  Donald previously was Senior Principal and co-led the transaction team at Square Mile Capital Management after he launched and scaled a special situations commercial real estate platform at Davidson Kempner Capital Management.  Prior to earning an M.B.A., he worked with The Carlyle Group, EastBanc, and Starwood Urban Investments.

Donald has meaningful prior academic experience having maintained dual faculty appointments for over a dozen years with Columbia University and New York University, where he developed the inaugural graduate-level distressed real estate investing electives within each institution’s curriculum. He maintains a faculty appointment with Auburn University and has lectured at Georgetown University, The George Washington University, Harvard University, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  His pedagogy spans undergraduate and graduate programs with a curricula of capital markets, distressed investing, structured finance, law, negotiation, private equity, and leadership.

Donald is a Board Member and Chair of the Audit Committee of Educational Housing Services - New York’s largest student housing operator – and serves as Chair of the Harvard Alumni Real Estate Board. He is active with the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council, having prior appointments to the Board of Governors, Co-Chair emeritus of the Education Committee, Co-Chair emeritus of the High Yield and Distressed Realty Assets Forum, and Member of the Editorial Board.  Donald collaborates with several privately-held investment management platforms as strategic advisor to founders and c-suite teams.       

Donald received a B.B.A. magna cum laude from The George Washington University and received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.