Official Event Advisory Panel
Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event is timely and relevant for all stakeholders working in the student accommodation sectors.
Vincent Wilson
President
Asia-Pacific Student Accommodation Association
Vincent Wilson is a CEO, Director, and Industry Leader. As the Chief Executive Officer of Deakin Residential Services he is responsible for the overall operational and strategic leadership of Deakin.
Residential Services, a subsidiary of Deakin University, with the primary purpose of sustainably developing and managing outstanding and market leading student accommodation premises, services, and support for Deakin students. Vincent is also the current President of AACUHO, the Australasian association for student housing, which advocates for excellence in the industry and boasts a broad membership including traditional colleges, Universities, and the private sector.
Conal Newland
Director
Savills
Conal brings over 12 years specialist sector experience advising both universities and private sector clients. He has extensive experience in valuation and advisory and student accommodation transactions. He relocated to Australia at the start of 2013 after having worked in the UK since 2004.
Conal is a Registered Valuer (UK and New Zealand) and a Certified Practicing Valuer (Australia). In the UK Conal acted for a large number of UK developers and funding institutions providing formal valuation advice. Some of Conal’s major clients included Unite Group Plc and Universities Partnerships Programme (UPP).
From 2013 – 2016 Conal has worked for the majority of the top Australian commercial operators and provided valuation advice on an asset and portfolio basis to clients. He also advises a number of universities including the University of Sydney, UNSW, UTS, Macquarie University, The University of Melbourne, RMIT, Deakin University, the University of Queensland and QUT.
His UK experience includes successfully completing UK student accommodation transactions comprising 10,000 bedrooms with total combined project finance value of over £550 million. In
Australia, he acted on behalf of Transfield Group on the sale of RMIT Village in Melbourne, the firstnlarge-scale off-campus operational student accommodation property offered to the market in
Australia. The sale completed in February 2014 for $60 million. He completed the sale of UniLodge @ Metro in Adelaide in October 2015 and worked on the sales team on the divestment of UniLodge @ UNSW in Sydney which completed in August 2016. Most recently he has negotiated the sale of a 280 scheme in Adelaide for over $45 million which was announced in March 2017.
Laura Berge
Student Experience Manager
Deakin University