JPMorgan’s Head of Commercial Real Estate Will Stay in Chicago

Over the course of her 20-year career, Michelle Herrick has distinguished herself in an industry centered on Wall Street and dominated by men.

As she prepares to lead JPMorgan Chase’s $145-billion commercial real estate division, Herrick is staying in Chicago rather than relocating to New York where the bank is headquartered.

With an MBA from the University of Chicago, Herrick made a steady ascent up the corporate ladder from La Salle Bank to Bank of America.

Herrick joined JP Morgan in 2017, starting as the real estate banking central region manager. With her home base in Chicago, Herrick oversaw a territory that stretched from Seattle to Atlanta before getting promoted to manage the bank’s CRE business across the United States.

In January, she will take over the entire CRE division and report to John Simmons, JPMorgan’s head of commercial banking.

Meanwhile, she’s already made her mark on Chicago. Herrick played a key role in bringing together a group of lenders to fund the $549 million construction loan for Salesforce Tower, one of the city’s largest financing deals of 2020 and one of the only large scale developments to start construction during the pandemic.

She also founded Yield Chicago, a program with the Urban Land Institute aimed at improving the diversity of developers in the city.

Since the pandemic, Herrick has had a front row seat to the city’s distress. Chicago has seen a steady flow of multimillion office foreclosures and stubbornly high vacancy rates, hovering around 30 percent.

But at the same time, Chicago’s multifamily market has proven to be a bright spot because a healthy job market and lagging development pipeline are fueling strong rent growth.

Heading into her new role, Herrick told the Commercial Observer that she feels confident navigating commercial lending’s choppy waters.

“At JP Morgan, we’re very comfortable with our exposure. Again, it doesn’t start with a dollar amount of debt; it starts with a desire to serve clients and their needs, and what ends up on our balance sheet is more of a reflection of that,” she said.