Callan, Crowd Street take real assets to accredited investors

Crowd Street and Callan added real assets to their investor-education series on May 27. The session, "Understanding Real Assets," covered real estate, infrastructure, farmland, and timberland. Christine Mays, a senior vice president in Callan's Real Assets Consulting Group, led the discussion. It came after a May 5 installment on venture and growth investing, and the series also takes in private credit and private equity.

Callan has advised institutional investors for more than 50 years. Its client list runs into the hundreds. Crowd Street's members are individuals who qualify for private-market access. "The only way for investors to fully harness the opportunity is to educate themselves," said John Imbriglia, Crowd Street's chief executive. Mays described real assets as "the backbone of global cities and economies," adding that each access route carries different risk and return characteristics.

The press release announcing the session went out August 20, nearly three months later. The framing is education, not product placement. But the series extends a pattern PWD has covered: the institutional private-markets playbook moving downstream. Retirement accounts now route into private funds, and mid-sized RIAs are adding alternative allocations. Crowd Street itself previously worked with Equity Trust to connect self-directed IRAs to private-market funds. Callan's participation means a consultant whose clients are endowments and foundations is teaching accredited individuals the same asset classes. The next installment will show whether this is taking shape as a standing curriculum.