Chief Development Officer / Partner at L Catterton Real Estate, since July 2006, and member of L Catterton Global ESG committee, with extensive experience in delivering high returns from complex diverse stakeholder retail anchored mixed-use projects. Responsible for LCRE’s development portfolio and management of its value-creation real estate development activities. A long track record of executive leadership, design thinking and success in opportunistic real estate private equity business planning, investment analysis, underwriting and origination, asset and portfolio management and business development. As part of L Catterton Real Estate, Mr. Gester has been responsible for the development of over $5 billion of real estate projects. Mr. Gester has over 30 years of comprehensive commercial real estate development experience that spans sectors and geographies. Previously, he was Head of Worldwide Store Development at DFS and prior to that he held senior positions at Mills Corporation and RTKL. Mr. Gester began in real estate in 1988, with the architecture firm SOM. He is a Registered Architect in the UK. Mr. Gester received a Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) degree from the University of Notre Dame, in 1987.