Photo by Jon Enoch

Ric Lewis (PMD 69, 1995) was studying economics at Dartmouth in the 1980s when he interviewed for a summer internship at Meredith & Grew, an old-line Boston brokerage and real estate development firm. “If you wanted to say, ‘one of these things doesn’t fit with the others,’ it was me,” says Lewis, who was the first in his extended family to attend college. “I got that job because the head of research was a Dartmouth graduate and he came up to campus to interview candidates—that shows the power of connection.” It’s a realization that inspired his Black Heart Foundation, an organization established in 2000 and dedicated to improving educational access and health outcomes for children from underprivileged backgrounds, through community initiatives and scholarships.

Working at Meredith & Grew every summer throughout college, Lewis found his path. “I told my basketball teammates, ‘I’m going to be in property, and I’m going to do well enough to give you guys a job.’ My parents had no clue about what I was doing, and I really didn’t, either. I just knew that the work involved financial services, which felt aspirational. All the rest came later,” Lewis recalls.

“All the rest” included a five-year stint in Boston as partner and senior managing director at AEW Capital Management. In 1999, Lewis moved to London to launch AEW Europe, a real estate investment business that grew to €18 billion in assets under management under his direction as chief investment officer. He then founded and served as CEO of AEW’s Curzon Global Partners before starting Tristan Capital Management in 2009, a real estate investment firm with eight offices across Europe and more than €12 billion in assets under management, where Lewis is now executive chairman and chief investment officer.

Tristan Capital’s home office in London’s Berkeley Square is a long way from Salem, Massachusetts, where Lewis’s father was a fireman. “My career happened because someone took a chance on me,” he says, alluding to that long-ago summer internship. In addition to increasing educational opportunities through his Black Heart Foundation, Lewis is a founding member of Impact X, a venture capital firm supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs across Europe. “My parents taught me generosity,” he says. “We didn’t have a whole lot when I was growing up, but I learned that whatever you have, you’re supposed to share it.”

Department of solutions: “I believe every problem is solved through a combination of science and magic. I was trained as a banker, so had credibility on the science and finance side; what I discovered is that I could also bring some magic and creativity to the real estate development side.”

What he loves: “Putting the pieces together with a client is the fun part, whether or not the development of a physical space is involved. I do have an appreciation for beautiful buildings, but I also love problem-solving and creating new financial products and relationships.”

Powered by PMD: “The people I met in PMD, from all over the world, gave me the confidence to go international; after I finished the program, I wrote the business plan for AEW to take our business outside North America. My partners said, ‘Okay, smart guy, go do it.’”

Culture shift: “I have British citizenship and have lived here a long time, but there are still moments when I feel my difference as an American—usually when there’s a presumption about how one does or doesn’t do things. That’s when I ask, but why? How is that helpful to you?”

Solving for X: “About 20 of us from the Black business community in the United Kingdom came together to do something about the fact that less than 2 percent of available venture capital goes to underrepresented communities. Our goal with Impact X is to amass £100 million of investment capital.”

Nova linguagem: “I was a Spanish minor in college and am okay in German, French, and Italian, but I didn’t know Portuguese and thought learning it on Duolingo would feed my curiosity during lockdown. I love the satisfaction of high-fiving the owl when I’ve done my lesson.”

Snack size: “I’m 6’10” and about 230 pounds, so I’m a five-small-meals-a-day kind of guy, starting with some granola or a bagel and avocado in the morning, and probably some form of shake I make with some protein mixes in there. I need to feed the monster regularly.”

Big game: “When I was at Dartmouth, we played at North Carolina when Michael Jordan was a senior. We hung in for about a half.”

Podcast picks: SmartLess, with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, and No Such Thing as a Fish, from the researchers behind the BBC game show QI.

Bookshelf: “Most of the books I read are to fuel curiosity and creativity. One I’d recommend is The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. The other my daughters gave me: There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, by a theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli. The first couple of chapters gave me a whole new way to think about my community and charitable involvement.”

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