Asuka Nakahara
Associate Director, Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School
Asuka Nakahara is the Associate Director of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center. He was a Trammell Crow Company partner and Chief Financial Officer over a 20-year career, retiring in 1999. He has subsequently consulted with investment management, international real estate, private equity, golf course, restaurant, media, and entertainment companies, as well as family offices and nonprofit and regulatory institutions. In 2009, Mr. Nakahara co-founded Triton Atlantic Partners, a real estate advisory and investment firm, and in 2022, with two professors, he co-founded Incompass Labs, an algorithmic performance measurement software company.
As Practice Professor in Real Estate over the past 22 years, he has received multiple "Excellence in Teaching" awards, presented to the top eight professors in the Wharton MBA Program based on student ratings. He is a past recipient of both the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Award, the top Wharton teaching honor, and the Class of 1984 Award, accorded to the professor with the highest teaching ratings. Mr. Nakahara was also awarded the University of Pennsylvania’s Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty, the university’s highest teaching award with selection across all of Penn’s schools based on peer and student recommendations.
He has served as lecturer, panelist or moderator for Harvard Law School, the PGA of America, Wharton's NFL program, National Association of Industrial and Office Parks, Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), CoreNet Global, PREA, ULI, SIOR, ICSC, Young Presidents' Organization, and the Los Angeles County Bar Association.
Asuka received his B.S. in Civil Engineering with honors from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He serves on the boards of Comcast Corporation, CBRE Global Real Estate Income Fund, and Rice University. He is a past board member of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the United States Golf Association, The Philadelphia Foundation, the PGA of America, and Merion Golf Club, and has chaired Finance, Investment, Governance, and Nominating Committees.