FOUNDER AND CEO, MERIT HILL

Ms. Raun Schlesinger is the Founder and CEO of Merit Hill. She has served on the Merit Hill Board of Directors since its inception in 2016. Ms. Schlesinger has been investing in the self-storage sector exclusively since 2006. She was formerly the Head of Self-Storage Investments at WPC, where she worked for over eleven years and, together with her team, built from inception the eighth largest self-storage operator in the U.S. Ms. Schlesinger co-founded WPC’s self-storage investment platform as the firm’s first independent investment vertical outside of triple net lease and helped to raise the initial capital for the self-storage platform. 

Over the course of her career, Ms. Schlesinger has evaluated over 7,600 self-storage acquisitions consisting of more than 11,500 properties and totaling over $33 billion in asset value. Ms. Schlesinger has sourced, executed and been responsible for the investment decision of 368 self-storage investments acquiring 610 separate self-storage properties; completed 20 full-cycle portfolio and single-asset exits of 147 properties, realizing significant returns on the investments she made; and 261 separate financings comprising more than 878 properties, altogether totaling more than $9.9 billion in self-storage transaction volume. She also helped to invest in 25 self-storage facilities in 18 transactions before she was the lead investment person responsible for sourcing, selecting and determining the appropriate value to pay for each investment. 

Prior to WPC, she spent four years as an Analyst and then an Associate in the Private Equity Group at Brown Brothers Harriman where she was responsible for sourcing, executing and monitoring investments for the 1818 Funds. Ms. Schlesinger serves on the Board of Trustees of Poly Prep Country Day School and the College Advisory Board at the University of Pennsylvania and previously served on the Penn Fund Board. Ms. Schlesinger graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.