James Gilligan
CFO and CCO
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- Full Name
- James G. Gilligan
- Title
- Chief Financial Officer (current, at Sealy & Company). Formerly CFO and Chief Compliance Officer of Equity International.
- Firm
- Sealy & Company (current). Previously Equity International, Farmland Partners (NYSE: FPI), and Equity Group Investments.
- Firm Type
- Real estate / private equity finance executive — not an angel investor. (The stub's "Angel Investors / Seed Round" classification appears to be an aggregator error; see Background.)
- Investment Stage
- Institutional real estate and private equity investments (not seed-stage venture).
- Sector Focus
- Real estate (commercial/industrial), private equity, credit, and public equities.
- Geographic Focus
- United States; previously cross-border investments in Brazil and Japan during his Equity International tenure.
- Location
- Chicago, Illinois (historical, with Equity International / Equity Group Investments).
Background
James Gilligan is a finance and real-estate investment executive who spent the bulk of his career inside Sam Zell's Chicago investment empire. He began as an investment banker / analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. before joining Equity Group Investments, Zell's privately held investment firm, where he worked as an investment professional on domestic and international deals across credit, private equity, and public equities.
He then spent roughly eight years at Equity International, the private-equity firm Sam Zell co-founded in 1999 to invest in real-estate businesses outside the United States. There he rose to Senior Vice President (rejoining in 2013), then Chief Financial Officer (2016–2021) and Chief Compliance Officer (2018–2021), overseeing the firm's tax, accounting, legal, and compliance functions and helping manage investments in markets including Brazil, Japan, and the U.S.
In October 2021 Gilligan was appointed Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE: FPI), a publicly traded farmland REIT, where he served until May 2024 (succeeded by Susan Landi). In April 2025 he joined Sealy & Company — a fully integrated commercial real-estate investment and operating company focused on industrial, distribution-warehouse, and flex properties — and was named its CFO effective June 16, 2025, succeeding retiring CFO James Cook.
Gilligan holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.B.A., both from Washington University in St. Louis.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Note: Gilligan is a CFO/CCO and institutional real-estate finance professional, not a venture/angel investor. No personal angel-investing thesis or seed-stage check-writing activity could be verified from public sources.
- His professional focus throughout his career has been real estate, private equity, credit, and public equities at institutional scale, primarily within Sam Zell-founded vehicles (Equity Group Investments, Equity International).
- At Equity International his mandate was cross-border real-estate private equity, including emerging and developed markets (Brazil, Japan, the U.S.).
- At Farmland Partners and Sealy & Company his role centers on corporate finance, treasury, capital markets, and compliance for real-estate operating/REIT platforms rather than direct startup investing.
Notable Investments
- No personal angel or startup investments could be verified. The deals associated with Gilligan are institutional, made by the firms he served as a finance executive:
- Equity International — Sam Zell's outbound real-estate private equity platform (founded 1999); Gilligan helped oversee its portfolio across Brazil, Japan, and the U.S. as CFO/CCO (specific deal-level attribution to him is not public).
- Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE: FPI) — publicly traded U.S. farmland REIT; Gilligan served as CFO/Treasurer 2021–2024 during a period of portfolio and cost-structure management.
- Sealy & Company — commercial real-estate investor/operator specializing in industrial, distribution-warehouse, and flex assets; Gilligan is current CFO (2025–).
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