THE SHB INTERVIEW A New Leader for ACC W ROB PALLESCHI CEO, American Campus Communities Palleschi : from the 34 November/December 2023 Rob Palleschi, an outsider to the student housing industry, has taken over the reins at American Campus Communities, the nation’s largest owner and manager. Interview by Richard Kelley and Randall Shearin While some might say it’s tough to be an outsider in the student housing industry, it’s a challenge that Rob Palleschi has embraced wholeheartedly. Palleschi joined American Campus Communi-ties (ACC) — the nation’s largest student hous-ing owner — in January 2023 as CEO, taking the reins from an industry legend, Bill Bayless. While Palleschi may be new to student housing, he’s not new to real estate. He joined from G6 Hospitality — the largest owner and operator of Motel 6 properties in the U.S. — where he served as CEO. Since Palleschi has been with ACC for nearly a year, SHB decided now would be a good time to discover how he’s finding the industry. SHB : What were your impressions of the student housing industry before you entered it? How have they borne out? Palleschi : My impression of student housing prior to joining was really dated. I have older daughters, and their college experience was 10 years ago. I’ve been on the board of Johnson & Wales University and also serve on the board at Southern Methodist University, so I’ve been hearing all of the conversations about student life experience from them and had that in the back of my head. But candidly, I thought — like many others — that off-campus student housing was really an extension of multifamily rather than a separate growing and maturing segment of commercial real estate. I’ve been pleasantly sur-prised to see the focus and commit-ment to student housing — not only at ACC, but throughout the rest of the indus-try as the segment matures. SHB : For those of our readers who may not know, can you just give us a little background on your history professionally? I’m hotel A public-private partnership between American Campus Communities and Georgetown University has broken ground on the redevelopment of Henle Village. space. I went to school at Johnson & Wales Uni-versity in Providence, Rhode Island, for culinary and hospitality management. I graduated and immediately left New England. I joined Hyatt and moved around with the company, then sev-eral other hotel companies, landing eventually at Hilton. I’d always been historically in property operations, then moved to the brand side at Hil-ton. I learned that side of the business and grew with the company. I’ve been in the hotel industry for 40 years, so student housing is a new adven-ture for me. I kind of feel like there’s somebody behind this move that’s made a $1 bet, like the movie ‘Trading Places.’ SHB : Tell us a bit about what made this job ap-pealing to you? Palleschi : ACC is an amazing company. What Bill Bayless created by founding this team over 30 years ago is nothing short of remarkable. Joining a seasoned business with professional operators was exciting to me. Student housing feels a lot like the hotel industry in a lot of re-spects. For me, I think that we can hopefully help bring some quick wins to ACC, and ideally I can share some best practices from the hospitality side across the segment to help everyone. The other part that has been exciting is just meeting so many amazing leaders in this industry. You’ve got the folks at Core Spaces and Cardinal, Land-mark, Greystar, and so on. It’s a bit humbling to be next to those guys. I give them a lot of credit for what they’ve done. SHB : Now that you’ve been in student hous-ing for about a year, what is your take on the industry? Palleschi : I think we as an industry have an op-portunity to do a little bit better when it comes to data mining and collection. Ensuring that we’ve got the accurate data to help make informed decisions for everything — from the pricing StudentHousingBusiness.com
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