James Graham

James started his career in student housing in 1999 as temp labor for turn at several communities in Tallahassee, Florida. While attending Florida State University, he advanced to Maintenance Supervisor before eventually moving over to operations and property management, first as a Leasing Manager and then as a Community Manager while working for one of the largest REITs in student housing, Education Realty Trust (EDR). In 2012 he relocated to Memphis, TN with a promotion to Regional Manager, overseeing a portfolio that covered nearly 7,000 beds and spanned from Lubbock, TX, to Greenville, NC and many points in between. After a combined 19 years in Owner-operated and public REIT student housing management, he made the jump to third-party management, joining Cardinal in April of 2018 and relocating to Denver, CO as Portfolio Manager.

James accepted a role as Group Facilities Manager in 2022, covering Cardinals growing Conventional and Affordable portfolios, providing facilities and operational support to teams in Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Montana, and Kentucky. In this capacity, James has been instrumental in assisting with national facilities and MRO platform creation, assisting with emergency response and management, policy creation and adoption, and building national partnerships with vendors across the multifamily housing industry. His primary interests in this role, such as building and expanding facilities operations and performance platforms, technology adoption, ESG integration, and asset preservation support services, afforded him the opportunity to accept a promotion to Director of Facilities for Cardinal Group Real Estate Services in April of 2023. In this role, James will continue to develop MRO platforms that complement Cardinal's expansive centralization program, embrace and build upon Cardinal's culture of excellence and support, and develop company-wide services and products that make communities safer, more effective, and more efficient to operate and maintain.