In April of 2015, my boss, Jonathan Schein, senior vice president of global business development at Institutional Real Estate, Inc., asked me about taking on business development for Institutional Investing in Infrastructure. My first reaction was “No!” The only thing I knew about infrastructure — bridges, toll roads, trains, airports — was how to use them, and, well, I hadn’t even heard of a P3 at the time.

I met with my boss’ boss, our CEO, Geoffrey Dohrmann, a few weeks later, and I mentioned to him, “I can’t do infrastructure. It’s so boring.” He asked me to think about it; so I spent a few days reading articles on the asset class, and spoke with a few managers and investors, but it wasn’t until I read an article about what infrastructure development could do for countries such as India — my motherland — or a continent such as Africa that it hit me. Infrastructure wasn’t just an investment vehicle; it was a means toward a greater goo