Julie Townsend

Julie Townsend is an executive director at PGIM Real Estate and the global co-head of Sustainability, responsible for overseeing the global sustainability program across its substantial equity and debt investment portfolio. Based in London, Julie also leads PGIM Real Estate’s sustainability implementation across Europe, APAC and LatAm regions, with responsibility for working in coordination with regional leadership, portfolio management teams and investors to develop their respective sustainability strategies to meet both regulatory and investor needs. Julie is a member of the European Executive Council.

Since joining PGIM Real Estate, Julie has overseen materiality assessments in both Europe and APAC, which have informed regionally appropriate strategies, evolved the due diligence process and elevated its position in Investment Committee, operationalized a sustainable development framework, which targets EU Taxonomy alignment and/or net zero, and led and advanced both voluntary and mandatory global disclosures.

Julie joined PGIM Real Estate after spending fifteen years at CBRE, latterly as head of environmental consultancy and a board member for CBRE UK Advisory. Julie was responsible during this time for leading all aspects of environmental sustainability advisory services and across all stages of the property life-cycle, tackling key issues such as climate change mitigation and adaption, net zero alignment and wellbeing.  Julie was also responsible for building capacity around Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) issues across the service lines/geographies of the UK business and was executive sponsor for the implementation of a sustainability strategy into CBRE UK & Ireland Advisory.

Julie is the co-chair of the investor working group at the Better Building Partnership and is an active member of  AREF climate disclosure working group and the ULI UK sustainability product council.