Jim Ketai co-founded Bedrock in 2011, served as the CEO and Managing Partner for over 7.5 years and now serves as the company’s Chairman. Jim has led Bedrock and its affiliates to their investment and commitment of more than $5.6 billion to acquire and develop more than 100 properties, totaling more than 18 million square feet in Detroit and Cleveland, and is under construction with ground up developments in excess of 2 million square feet in Detroit. Jim and his team have brought more than 330 new business to Detroit’s Central Business District. He is an active member of the community, serving the boards of the Urban Land Institute and the Jewish Federation of Metro Detroit. Jim is also a member of the State Bar of Michigan and Colorado. Before forming Bedrock, Jim Ketai was the Managing Partner of Etkin Equities, a Southfield based development company, for over 21 years and led the development, management and leasing of more than 8 million square feet of owned and managed commercial real estate holdings.
Steve Bentley is Chief Financial Officer for Bedrock, responsible for managing all aspects of the company’s accounting and finance functions. Steve joined the team in 2013—during Bedrock’s second year—as its first CFO. In recent years, Steve has managed and directed the growth of the accounting/finance teams from five to 25-plus team members in order to meet the demands of Bedrock’s constant growth. He has also closed on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and tens of millions in tax credit syndications. Steve brings more than 32 years of experience to this role. Prior to joining Bedrock, he served for 16 years as Chief Financial Officer and Principal of Burton-Katzman, a real estate development and property management firm.
With more than 20 years of experience holding senior management positions in real estate development and property management, Tamara leads numerous aspects of the company’s operations including property management, engineering, sustainability, crisis management and more. Tamara oversees Bedrock’s 100+ commercial and residential properties in downtown Detroit and Cleveland totaling more than 18 million square feet. She ensures the company maintains an energetic, healthy work environment exemplifying best-inclass commercial real estate practices. Tamara attended Grand Valley University where she studied business administration; she also maintains a Michigan real estate sales license. She is a member of SHRM, CREW, BOMA, and earned an Advanced Human Resource Compliance Certification through the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. In 2013, her passion and success led DBusiness magazine to recognize her as one of Detroit’s top female business leaders, for which she received a “Powered by Women” award. More recently, Tamara was named one of Real Estate Forum’s “2016 Women of Influence.”
Melissa Dittmer serves as Bedrock’s first Chief Design Officer and is responsible for coordinating both short- and long-term design strategies throughout all aspects of Bedrock. In her role, she utilizes design-thinking to ensure that every physical, spatial and urban experience is well-designed for all of the people who live, work and play within our properties and cities. Most recently, Melissa collaborated with Detroit’s civic leaders on the city’s Amazon HQ2 proposal. In her role, Melissa led the creation of the 242-page Amazon Vision Book that illustrated Detroit’s unparalleled opportunity for growth, the city’s unique lifestyles, and Detroit’s development strategy for Amazon’s HQ2. She has co-authored all of the company’s master planned projects including Rivereast, Douglass Site and City Modern. As a design advocate, Melissa co-led the organization, design, and curation of a 17 day architecture exhibition called “Detroit Design 139” that resulted in 16 special public events, 5000 exhibit visitors, 19 published design articles, and three media outlets declaring Detroit as a top 10 tourist design destination. Throughout all of her work, Melissa strives to demonstrate the importance of utilizing architecture and design as urban regeneration strategies.
Tushar Pandit serves as Bedrock’s first Vice President of People. In this role, he oversees the strategic growth and development of Bedrock’s workforce, which has grown from less than 100 team members to over 500 in the last five years. Tushar is committed to making Bedrock a career destination while focusing on attracting and retaining the best talent in today’s marketplace. Tushar leads organizational performance, total rewards, diversity and inclusion, talent management and leadership development. Joining Bedrock with nearly 20 years of human resource leadership experience, Tushar is frequently featured as a subject matter expert at human resources events and conferences. Tushar earned his MBA from Ivey Business School and holds several certifications, including SHRM-SCP, GPHR, CHRL and CHRP.
Heather Wilberger is Bedrock’s Chief Information Officer, responsible for overseeing and managing the information technology team and all strategic technology acquisitions for the company. Heather brings to Bedrock more than 15 years of experience in information technology, both in the public and private sectors. Her specialties range from designing and implementing networks, to minimizing redundancies for our systems, to implementing and managing all software as it relates to the property management acquisition and development portions of our business. Before coming to Bedrock, the newly minted Michigan resident was most recently the CIO for a large-scale residential and commercial property management firm on the West Coast.
Angelo is serving as Bedrock’s General Counsel as well as the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Quicken Loans. He joined Quicken Loans as legal counsel 22 years ago while leading the 200-person legal team. Angelo brings a wealth of experience across all legal matters, with one of his key areas of expertise being real estate leasing. Angelo is particularly adept at creating process, protocol and rigor when it comes to the operational service of the legal team to the business units. In addition to his managing counsel responsibilities, he is also enthusiastically involved in the company’s leadership development program as an instructor, guest speaker and advocate.
Bill Emerson is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Bedrock. Bill also serves as the Vice Chairman of Quicken Loans and Rock Holdings, Inc., the parent company of Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest mortgage lender and several other FinTech businesses. Previously, Bill was Chief Executive Officer of Quicken Loans, a position he held for 15 years. Under his leadership, Quicken Loans became the second largest retail mortgage lender and closed more than $400 billion of mortgage volume across all 50 states from 2013 through 2017. This wealth of experience growing a complex, national brand will help take Bedrock to their next stage of growth.