John Devereux
President & COO
John brings over 29 years of real estate equity and debt experience to Watt. In addition to his private equity and lending background, he also has vast operational experience and has a history of building fast growing businesses. His resume includes two years as Chief Real Estate Officer at real estate tech company PeerStreet, six years as EVP, Head of Commercial Real Estate at OneWest Bank and nine years as Principal at Colony Capital.
At PeerStreet, John led the company’s 4x growth in revenue and 3x increase in monthly marketplace volume as the company surpassed $3 billion in loans funded and transitioned from Series B to Series C funding. While at OneWest Bank, he was instrumental in growing the commercial real estate holdings from less than $500 million to more than $6 billion in under a year, and he started and managed the Special Assets, Portfolio Management and CRE Bridge Lending groups.
The CRE Bridge Lending Group originated over $1 billion annually in floating rate debt. At Colony, John was responsible for forming commercial real estate joint ventures and managed a portfolio valued at more than $1 billion of U.S. office, retail, multi-family and hospitality investments.
He is a graduate of Stanford University with a mechanical engineering degree, Claremont McKenna College with an economics degree and UCLA’s Anderson School of Business with an MBA.