One of Blackstone’s Highest-Ranking Women Killed in Shooting
Wesley LePatner, CEO of Blackstone’s real-estate megafund, took cover behind a pillar during the attack
Wesley LePatner was a star in Blackstone’s vast real-estate business, rising to oversee one of its major strategies and one of its biggest funds.
She was killed Monday evening in the lobby of the company’s building, shot down by a gunman allegedly angry at the National Football League, another tenant of the building. LePatner took cover behind a pillar as the shooter sprayed the lobby with gunfire. The shooter killed four people before killing himself. An NFL employee was injured and in critical condition.
LePatner, 43 years old, was Blackstone’s global head of Core+ real estate, heading up less risky, lower-returning investments across Blackstone’s $325 billion property business. She also served as chief executive of Breit, the company’s real-estate megafund aimed at individual investors launched in 2017.
Blackstone President Jonathan Gray teared up on a call with employees Tuesday morning as he spoke about LePatner. Most of the company’s New York employees stayed home Tuesday as its Park Avenue office building was closed to tenants while investigators combed through the crime scene.
In an interview Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal, Gray said he had seen LePatner earlier Monday at the weekly meeting of Blackstone’s real-estate investment committee. Her business was dealing with a difficult issue, but she made it clear she had it under control.
“She just instilled such a sense of confidence in her,” Gray said, adding that she was one of the most universally liked people at the firm.
“There was no edge to her,” he said. “She wanted other people to win.”
The shooting unfolded during the evening rush at around 6:30 p.m. LePatner was on her way out of the office to meet a colleague for a drink, according to a person familiar with the matter. Her colleague came down in an elevator to meet her and saw her lying on the floor.
Gray was up in his office, which sits on the 44th floor, and started receiving reports from colleagues that LePatner had been shot. He said no other Blackstone employees were injured. Blackstone Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman wasn’t in the building.
A Yale graduate, LePatner started at Blackstone in 2014. She had previously spent 11 years working in various real-estate roles at Goldman Sachs. She lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her husband, Evan LePatner, managing partner of private-equity firm Courizon Partners, and their two children, a girl and a boy.
She rose to become one of Blackstone’s highest-ranking women. She counted Kathleen McCarthy, global co-head of the company’s prominent real-estate business, as a mentor. LePatner became CEO of Breit in January when Frank Cohen, another mentor, stepped down.
McCarthy said she had known LePatner for over 20 years since they worked together as analysts at Goldman. It took her two tries to convince LePatner to join Blackstone, but the opportunity to build the Core+ business essentially from scratch finally won her over.
“This is a person who was the source of so much good and light in the world, who herself was so accomplished, and yet was the highest integrity, most supportive colleague and friend,” McCarthy said in an interview with the Journal. “It’s so rare to have those things in combination.”
Throughout the company, LePatner was seen as a selfless advocate for other women, helping them get promoted, manage office politics and celebrate their achievements.
LePatner’s father was a partner and head of the international insolvency group at law firm Paul Hastings, and her mother was a lawyer specializing in real estate, according to her 2006 wedding announcement in the New York Times. She met her husband on the first day of their freshman year at Yale.
“We cannot properly express the grief we feel upon the sudden and tragic loss of Wesley,” the LePatner family said in a statement. “She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable. To so many others, she was a beloved, fiercely loyal and caring friend, and a driven and extraordinarily talented professional and colleague.”
LePatner served on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, the UJA-Federation of New York and Yale University Library Council. She was a member of the Advisory Board of Governors of the National Association of Real Estate Investment.
In 2023, she received the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award from the UJA-Federation of New York. In a speech at the event, Gray joked that she was a giant of the real estate industry, despite being only about 5 feet tall. He also spoke about her career ascendance and her support for other women of Wall Street, saying “she pays it forward from generation to generation.”