Maurice Coleman is a managing director of Cherokee Investment Partners LLC and has been with the group since February of 2006. Cherokee is a private equity real estate firm with $2billion of committed capital from institutional investors that was actually founded in 1984 when a group of investors purchased four brick plants and merged them to form the Cherokee Sanford Group. Coleman is responsible for evaluating and understanding macro economic trends that impact real estate investing and recommends portfolio allocation strategies to maximize return on a risk-adjusted basis.

A resident of Raleigh, N.C., Coleman earned his bachelor’s in finance from LSU in 1986 and his MBA from the Flores MBA Program in 1989. Coleman began his professional career as a commercial lending officer at Wachovia Bank before moving to Delta Air Lines, where he stayed for 14 years. Ultimately, he served as director of alternative investments and managed a $1.7 billion portfolio of pension assets for Delta’s retirement funds.

By 1990, Cherokee had become the largest soil remediator in the mid-Atlantic region. The achievement of that goal began just four years earlier when petroleum-contaminated soil was found at one of the plant sites and a process for decontamination was developed. Since then, Cherokee has continuously grown its institutional capital. A portion of Coleman’s responsibilities is to ensure that the organization’s investors are kept up-to-date with investment activities and overall fund performance.

Last May, Coleman joined the E. J. Ourso College’s Dean’s Advisory Council as a member of its Academic Committee. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst Charterholder and a member of both the Pension Real Estate Association and the Urban Land Institute. Additionally, he works with Cherokee’s foundation, Cherokee Gives Back, to aid in the rebuilding process of homes in New Orleans that were decimated by Hurricane Katrina.
 

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