Barbara Salk
President & COO
Newgard Group

Barbara Salk is currently President and COO for Newgard Group where she is currently overseeing all aspects of development and finance for the company, while directly overseeing Newgard’s newest endeavor which is a 1.6 million SF mixed use project located within the Miami World Center Development, one of the most transformative development projects in the country.

She brings over twenty-eight years of multi-disciplined real estate experience in Development, Asset Management, Due Diligence and Sales. Her development experience captures the full life cycle of a project from conception to completion including site feasibility, design, underwriting, entitlements, finance, construction, marketing, sales and closings.

She has had direct responsibility for development of condominium projects valued in excess of $1 billion, which represented over 2,000 units as a Senior Vice President of The Related Group. During her 11 year tenure there, she also honed her real estate as well as diplomacy skills while leading asset management teams in unprecedented condominium closings in two distressed submarkets for two large bank syndicates, encompassing 12 lending institutions during the real estate downturn 2009-2010.

Prior to joining Newgard, she set up an asset management platform for newly acquired portfolios of multifamily and commercial loans and real estate throughout the country with a combined value of over $457 million. Her duties included managing the legal process to take loans to REO including dealing with bankruptcy plans, guarantor litigation and settlements. She oversaw a portfolio of 6,000 multifamily units and 14 commercial properties including leasing, construction, finance, property management and asset dispositions while managing distributions and capital calls to partners.

Ms. Salk’s instructional level real estate experience began in real estate working for a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs in the 1990’s whereby she was in charge of environmental and property condition issues for acquisition opportunities in excess of $18 billion and negotiated environmental and capital funding adjustments with lenders and rating agencies on transaction totaling over $3.5 billion in proceeds. She began her real estate career in the mid-80’s working in commercial real estate analyzing prospective leases, options and settlement offers for two major office complexes totaling over 13 million square feet.

Ms. Salk served for two years on the University of Florida’s Real Estate Advisory Board and was Co-Chair of American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Committee E50.02.07, which established and published the national standard for property inspections.

Ms. Salk holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance with a concentration in Marketing from Indiana University. She is a current member of the Urban Land Institute and is an avid wine and dog lover as well as a passionate supporter of the Arts, which is reflected in the many projects she has and will develop.