Our Professionals

Adam N. Heavenrich is a longtime transaction and finance professional with over twenty years of experience in structuring, selling, acquiring, and underwriting healthcare and real estate projects. He has served as lead financial advisor to publicly- and privately-held assisted living, independent living, and nursing home companies.

His articles have appeared in major senior living and healthcare publications including Nursing Homes Magazine, Assisted Living Today and the American College of Physicians Observer (see Articles); he has also lectured widely on the subject of healthcare mergers and acquisitions. He is an Executive Circle Member for the National Investment Center for the Senior Housing & Care Industry (NIC).

Prior to founding Heavenrich & Company in 1994, Heavenrich was senior underwriter for real estate lending at the U.S. unit of Sanwa Bank, then the world's fifth-largest bank. Prior to Sanwa, Heavenrich held positions with Shearson Lehman's real estate investment banking subsidiary. He began his career as director of sales and marketing for a New York Stock Exchange-listed healthcare real estate company.

Heavenrich earned a Diploma from the London School of Economics and his M.B.A. in finance and marketing from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, with a concentration in healthcare and real estate finance. He earned his B.A. in economics and graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1984. He lives north of Chicago with his wife and three children.

Jay Beckhorn is Northeast Regional Director of Heavenrich & Company. He has twenty-plus years of broad-based experience in senior housing and real estate finance, development, acquisitions, dispositions and workouts.

Prior to joining Heavenrich, Jay served as a Senior Vice President of Sunrise Senior Living's Capital Group. Working with lenders and institutional investors, he supported Sunrise's growth, by arranging the debt financing for much of the Company's North American development, acquisition and sales activities. During his tenure there, Sunrise developed approximately two hundred new communities and tripled in size.

Before joining Sunrise, Jay worked for the Riggs Bank in a variety of real estate related capacities. He was the Managing Director and Senior Asset Manager for the Multi-Employer Property Trust, where he oversaw the management, leasing and valuation of a 126 property, $2 billion real estate pension fund for which the Bank was the trustee. Prior to that, he served as a Vice President in the Bank's Commercial Real Estate, OREO, and Special Assets Groups. He originated new commercial real estate loans and disposed of troubled loans and properties held by the Bank and its UK subsidiary.

Jay started his real estate career with Kettler, a Washington, D.C. area real estate developer, where he worked as analyst, retail leasing agent and Assistant Treasurer.

He earned his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and his BA in History from Colgate University where he graduated Cum Laude. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and daughters.

Shannon Gifford, CFA, serves as Senior Analyst for Heavenrich & Company. For over 20 years Shannon has worked as a financial consultant in Colorado, advising on business and development plans, financial structures, lender and investor relations, debt restructurings and preparing complex financial models as president of Helios Associates.

Prior to 1991, Shannon spent six years working at Columbia University, where she worked on the development of a biomedical research park, evaluated prospective acquisitions and developed policies for the management of the University's extensive institutional real estate portfolio, and carried out a range of projects for the University's treasurer and CFO. In New York she also worked for two years for The Publishing Group, conducting acquisition feasibility analyses and advising on financial structure for prospective buyout transactions. Previous assignments included conducting market and technical studies to analyze prospective development projects, working for a New York-based land planning consultant, and researching proposed exhibitions for the Cooper Hewitt Museum.

Shannon is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). She is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the CFA Institute and previously chaired the Land Use Committee of the Colorado Commercial Real Estate Coalition for many years. Shannon studied at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, graduated from Swarthmore College and received an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School and a Master's degree in City Planning from the Graduate School of the Fine Arts, both at the University of Pennsylvania.