David Fries, a nationally known real estate and legal executive for three decades, is a partner and investor in Orchard Partners, LLC.  He is the Chief Profitability Officer for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, one of the world’s leading law firms, and is broadly viewed as one of the foremost authorities on the “business of law.”  David is also a Strategic Member of Greyfields Investors, a New York-based real estate private equity company.

From 1998 through 2005, David served as a senior executive at NYSE-listed Prologis (formerly AMB Property Corporation) in San Francisco, Boston and Shanghai, ultimately as Executive Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Corporate Affairs, and Chairman and CEO of AMB China, Ltd. During his tenure at AMB, David was a member of AMB’s Management and Investment Committees and was responsible for overseeing AMB’s human resource, information technology, legal, environmental, engineering and risk management departments, as well as its airport facilities group, venture capital investments and other strategic business initiatives and transactions. In 2004, in addition to his other responsibilities, he led AMB’s entry into the China market, including opening AMB’s first office in China in Shanghai.  Prior to joining AMB, he was a partner at Orrick and Morrison & Foerster LLP, where he was lead counsel on in excess of $10 billion of real estate transactions.

Fries received a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif.  He serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings (www.ceeas.org), a DC-based non-profit focusing on transforming the educational opportunities for incarcerated youths, and has served on a variety of company boards in the real estate and technology sectors.