Professor Bates has over 28 years of commercial real estate investment experience with a current focus on Active Adult Rental residential housing as well as significant experience in real estate joint venture investments involving the development and repositioning of real estate assets. He serves as a Managing Partner of ElmRidge Property Group, LLC, a real estate development and investment firm focused on Active Adult Rentals throughout the US (with an emphasis on growing jobs markets in the southern and southwestern US), with its headquarters located in New York City. He is experienced in development oversight, asset allocation, portfolio management, manager selection, property underwriting and management, and partnering governance. Prior to ElmRidge, he served as Head of the Americas, managing an investment program in the US, Canada, and Brazil, and as a member of the global investment committee of LaSalle Global Partner Solutions, an investment platform with over $7 billion in assets under management, and its predecessor, Aviva Investors, for over ten years where he managed an investment program for joint venture, co-investment, as well as primary and secondary fund investing.  Previously, he was a co-founder and Managing Director of Madison Harbor Capital; President of Madison Harbor Balanced Strategies, Inc., a registered investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940; a Director of real estate investment banking at UBS Investment Bank; and an attorney at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, where he focused on real estate companies and asset-backed securitization.

Russ is a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the ULI Lifestyle Residential Development Council (LRDC) 55+, the Gay Real Estate Group, and the Real Estate Pride Council. He is a former member of the board of directors of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers (NAREIM), the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), and the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) as well as inactive member of the Maryland State Bar Association. He is also an Eagle Scout. He holds a Juris Doctor degree with a focus on securities regulation from the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, where he was a member of the SMU Law Review, and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance with a minor in Information Technology from Baylor University.