StepStone Real Estate Hires Jennifer Jones, Launches S-Core Platform to Expand Core Real Estate Investments

StepStone Real Estate announced January 27 the addition of Jennifer Jones as Partner and the launch of S-Core, a platform designed to significantly expand the firm's Core/Core+ real estate investment activities. Jones will be based in San Francisco and will oversee a global investment mandate.

Prior to joining StepStone Real Estate, Jones spent nearly two decades at UBS where she led over $20 billion in transactions. She most recently served as Senior Portfolio Manager for UBS's Global Core Plus vehicle for US Investors and for various Core+ separate accounts. She also held the position of Head of Real Estate Partnerships and Investments for UBS's $100+ billion Real Estate and Private Markets team.

S-Core Platform Strategy and Investment Approach

At StepStone Real Estate, Jones will leverage her experience to oversee the launch of S-Core, a global Core/Core+ platform. The firm has a long track record investing in Core/Core+ funds, secondaries and co-investments through separate accounts and its advisory practice and intends to significantly increase its activities through S-Core.

Consistent with StepStone's approach across asset classes, S-Core will invest in Core and Core+ real estate through multiple channels: secondaries, including GP-led secondaries, recapitalizations, and LP secondaries; co-investments alongside funds and programmatic joint ventures; tactical real estate operating company investments; and primary commitments to funds in which StepStone Real Estate has high conviction, and to newly formed funds on a fee and governance-favored basis.

S-Core will be initially structured as a series of separate accounts. The foundation for portfolio construction will be StepStone Real Estate's House Views, but the separate account approach will allow investors to customize their portfolios by factors including geography, property types, investment structures and leverage levels.

Market Position and Deal Flow

According to Jeff Giller, Global Head of StepStone Real Estate, "S-Core will follow StepStone's investment approach whereby we believe the scale of our activities can provide investors with access to seasoned assets at discounts to their fair market value and access to funds at favorable fees. We intend to leverage our existing secondaries, co-investment and fund investment capabilities to source and manage S-Core investments. Our connectivity to the market through our solutions approach to investment management and advisory is expected to drive S-Core's deal flow."

In 2025, StepStone Real Estate allocated over $17 billion to funds, secondaries and co-investments globally and conducted over 1,000 meetings with real estate GPs. "We believe that this connection to the market has resulted in an information, market intelligence and transaction sourcing advantage for SRE where a disproportionate number of our investments aren't brokered and come to us off market," Giller added.