On Monday, an armed gunman in New York City’s east Midtown Manhattan neighborhood killed four people, including an off-duty NYPD police officer.
The following day, real estate investment company Blackstone confirmed that Wesley LePatner, global head of Core+ real estate and the chief executive officer of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, was also among the dead. BREIT has been behind high-ticket real estate transactions, including several involving Las Vegas hotels in recent years.
According to her biography on Blackstone’s website, LePatner joined the company in 2014. She also was a member of Blackstone Real Estate’s Investment committee. She previously was the chief operating officer of the company’s Core+ business as well as BREIT.
Before joining Blackstone, LePatner had spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs, most recently as a managing director in the Real Estate Investment Group within the Asset Management division. She also worked in Goldman Sachs’ Real Estate Principal Investment Area and Real Estate Investment Banking Group, where she began her career after graduating from Yale University in 2003.
LePatner earned her BA in History from Yale University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She served on the boards of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, The UJA-Federation of New York and Yale University Library Council and was a member of the Advisory Board of Governors of NAREIT.
LePatner married in 2006 and had two children, according to Reuters. The LePatner family released a statement commemorating the leader and requesting privacy: “She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable. To so many others, she was a beloved, fiercely loyal and caring friend, and a driven and extraordinarily talented professional and colleague,” the statement said. “At this unbearably painful time, we are experiencing an enormous, gaping hole in our hearts that will never be filled, yet we will carry on the remarkable legacy Wesley created.”