Our Team

Dan Healy is responsible for the general management of Civitas Capital Group. Since founding the Firm with Rafael Anchia in 2009, Mr. Healy has overseen the investment of over $1.9 billion in real estate, lodging and related asset classes.

A real estate finance veteran, he has over 22 years of experience with transactions across virtually all property types and throughout the capital stack. His experience also includes structuring platform investments, programmatic joint ventures, and discretionary funds.

Mr. Healy is a team-oriented leader dedicated to the Firm’s three core values, especially his favorite, Focused Creativity. Anchored by a strong belief that business can and should be a force for good, he works closely with Mr. Anchia and Jonathan Kern, the Firm’s President and Chief Investment Officer, to bring this philosophy to life through strategy, product development, and talent acquisition. Mr. Healy also personally manages many of the Firm’s most important client relationships, which include insurance companies, pension funds, family offices, and individual clients, foreign and domestic.

Under his leadership, Civitas built a vertically integrated EB-5 investment platform that has served over 1,500 individual EB-5 investors from over 40 countries, in the process becoming a national leader frequently cited for its innovative, public-private partnership with the City of Dallas. An elected member of the Board of Directors of the trade association Invest in the USA (IIUSA), Mr. Healy is an expert on EB-5 policy and an outspoken advocate of reform and expansion of the program. Mr. Healy has testified on EB-5 before the Judiciary Committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and regularly consults with Congressional and Executive Branch staff.

Prior to founding Civitas, Mr. Healy held senior executive roles with Royalton Real Estate Capital, LLC (n/k/a SWBC Real Estate, LLC) and Highland Capital Management, LP. At these firms, he was responsible for managing over $200 million of institutional capital across a wide range of real estate investments.

Mr. Healy is an active member of the Dallas business and civic community. He is a member of the Dallas Citizens Council and an advisor to the Child Poverty Action Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to ending childhood poverty in Dallas. In 2021, he was named to the Dallas 500, D CEO’s annual list of the 500 most influential business leaders in North Texas. Mr. Healy holds a Master of Business Administration from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Dallas.

In 2023, he was named a Distinguished Alumni from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Recognition and Awards:

• 2023 University of Texas at Dallas Distinguished Alumni Award
• 2021 D CEO Dallas 500 Most Influential Business Leaders
• Board of Directors of Invest In The USA (IIUSA)
• 2017 D CEO Financial Executive Awards
• 2013 Dallas Business Journal 40 under 40

Jonathan Kern is the President & Chief Investment Officer for Civitas Capital Group. In his role, Mr. Kern directs the development, execution, and performance of the company’s investment strategies to ensure that every aspect of our investment function is aligned with the firm’s core values and purpose. In this capacity, Mr. Kern guides the entire life cycle of Civitas’ commercial real estate and lodging investments. At the investment vehicle level, Mr. Kern is responsible for overall investment performance and coordination with operations, finance, legal, compliance, and other departments. At the individual property level, Mr. Kern oversees the portfolio managers and the investment teams ultimately responsible for originations, underwriting, structuring, financing, asset management, and dispositions. Working with the sales, marketing, and operations teams, Mr. Kern is focused on promoting, servicing, and supporting Civitas’ portfolio of investments, with an increased focus on investor experience.

Mr. Kern has more than 37 years of experience building and managing multiple investment teams across asset classes, including real estate, private equity, and growth capital. Most recently, from 2014-2017, he was Chief Investment Officer and Head of Direct Investments at ORIX USA, the Dallas-based financial services group, where he oversaw more than $2 billion of investments across all sectors. There, Mr. Kern created and led ORIX’s Direct Investments business unit, where he established investment strategy and targets, reviewed and approved investment decisions, and directed portfolio management across a range of asset classes.

Previously, from 2010-2013, Mr. Kern served as President of GE Capital Real Estate’s Global Investment Management organization, in which he built a new phase of GE’s $40 billion real estate equity investment business and raised more than $3B in total equity across eight investment vehicles, attracting major global asset management firms as investors. From 2003-2013, Mr. Kern was Chief Investment Officer for the same organization, where he drove 100-plus new investment initiatives resulting in the production of over $2 billion incremental net income and five years of record core investment volumes totaling a 500 percent increase.

Mr. Kern holds a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Harvard University. He holds a Master of Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Heather Jones is the Chief Operating Officer for Civitas Capital Group. In her role, Ms. Jones directs her efforts to improve and manage firmwide infrastructure, provide leadership for overall day-to-day operations, and support client development efforts. In addition to her wider responsibilities, Ms. Jones is responsible for providing oversight for Investor Relations, Marketing and Communications, and EB-5 Operations.

Ms. Jones brings with her more than 20 years of experience in financial services, during which time she has led operations and compliance implementation strategies, driving multiple firms’ global expansion. Prior to Civitas, Ms. Jones was COO for Starz Real Estate, a private equity-backed CRE debt fund that deploys capital across Europe. She was the firm’s first employee, responsible for designing and building the operational infrastructure, including finance and accounting, legal, compliance, investment committee, investor relations, and marketing. Within the first two years under her leadership, Starz deployed over €450 million of capital in nine European jurisdictions. Prior to Starz, Ms. Jones was the COO for the European Commercial Real Estate Finance team at Deutsche Bank. Previously, Ms. Jones spent 13 years at Credit Suisse in both NYC and London. Ms. Jones has a deep understanding of commercial real estate and building operational infrastructure for growing companies.

Ms. Jones is a U.S./U.K dual citizen, a cross-cultural communication leader, and passionate about giving back to the community. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of West Florida and an MBA from the University of Georgia.

Rafael Anchia is a co-founder and Managing Director of Civitas Capital Group. He is responsible for new market development, public policy, and public-private partnerships. For more than 25 years, Mr. Anchia has worked as a corporate attorney with top U.S.-based international law firms. Since 2005, Mr. Anchia has served as a State Representative in the Texas Legislature, where he is past Chairman of the Pensions, Investments & Financial Services Committee. From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Anchia served as an appointee of President Barack H. Obama to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, which advises the United States Trade Representative on issues related to international investment and trade.

Mr. Anchia earned his juris doctorate at Tulane University Law School and received his undergraduate degree cum laude from Southern Methodist University. He has served as a guest lecturer and adjunct professor on international investment and trade at several universities, including Texas Tech University Law School, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.

Recognition and Awards:

• Currently serving his tenth term in the Texas Legislature as a State Representative
• Chair of Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Broadband
• Member of House Committee on Environmental Regulations
• Member of House Committee on State Affairs
• Serves on the Texas Privacy Protection Advisory Council
• Of Counsel at Haynes and Boone, LLP
• Serves on Dean’s Advisory Board at Tulane University School of Law

Ryan Monteiro is Chief Financial Officer at Civitas Capital Group. He oversees all finance functions, including accounting, tax, financial reporting, planning, budgeting, treasury, and audit.

Prior to joining Civitas, Mr. Monteiro was the Chief Financial Officer at Oaxaca Interests, a real estate development company and asset manager focused on urban core development. Prior to Oaxaca Interests, he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in management consulting. In this role, he helped build the finance function for a company with more than $2 billion in AUM. Prior to management consulting, he audited several multibillion-dollar private equity real estate funds in Dallas.

Mr. Monteiro received his Master of Business Administration, Master’s in professional accounting, and Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an active CPA.

Austin Khan is an experienced hotel and real estate investment management professional and a senior member of the Investments team at Civitas. Mr. Khan’s 23 years of experience in real estate principal investment and advisory roles encompasses hospitality, office, multifamily and retail investments throughout the capital stack. Mr. Khan brings over $1.2 billion in lodging investment experience and $3 billion of total real estate transaction experience to Civitas Capital Group.

At Civitas, Mr. Khan is responsible for general management of the firm’s lodging investment team. He serves on the firmwide Investment Committee as well as various other committees, boards, and the like related to Civitas lodging investment vehicles.

Mr. Khan most recently served as Managing Director of Blue Lion Capital, LLC an investment and advisory firm focused on real estate special situations investing. Prior to Blue Lion Capital, Mr. Khan was Chief Investment Officer of Ethika Investments, a $1.2 billion real estate private equity platform focused on opportunistic equity investments and high-yield credit, with a significant focus on the hotel sector. There, he oversaw investments in 15 hotels throughout the United States, including acquisitions and significant redevelopments.

Prior to Ethika, Mr. Khan served for five years as Vice President of Acquisitions at TRT Holdings, the parent company of Omni Hotels, among other holdings. In this leadership role, in addition to he worked with senior management to build three key lodging verticals for the firm: distressed credit, public-private development partnerships, and public company investing. Mr. Khan helped to lead the teams that developed the Omni Dallas Hotel and Omni Nashville Hotel.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Khan served as Real Estate Acquisitions Manager for OTO Development, focused on development of upper-midscale and upscale select service properties. Mr. Khan started his real estate career in investment banking roles at Banc of America Securities and Arthur Andersen. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia.