David P. O’Connor is the senior managing partner at High Rise Capital Management, LP, a company he co-founded in 2001 and grew into one of the largest real estate securities hedge funds in the world until their peak liquidation in 2011. He serves as a director on several corporate boards, including: Paramount Group, Inc. in New York; Regency Centers, Inc., the national shopping center company; and Songbird Estates PLC, the majority owner of Canary Wharf in London.

Born in Summit, NJ to Terrence and Diane O’Connor, Dave is a fourth-generation Irish American who earned his B.S. in management from Boston College, where he is now a two-term member of the Board of Trustees. “A continuing evolution,” is how he characterizes the importance of his Irish heritage, fitting for a man whose first entrepreneurial exploit involved being “stung by bees, falling off of ladders and getting turpentine in the eyes,” when he founded a house painting company while in high school.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife Maureen and their children, Janie and Kelly.