Prior to co-founding Cirrus, Mr. McDonnell served as the Chief Investment Officer of Ascend Real Estate Partners.  Previously, Mr. McDonnell served as Portfolio Manager primarily responsible for real and hard asset strategies at BlueMountain Capital Management.  Prior to joining BlueMountain in 2013, Mr. McDonnell was a Director at Meadow Partners where he was responsible for the acquisition and asset management of real estate debt and equity investments within the United States as well as the firm’s evaluation of various private market special situations.  Mr. McDonnell began his career at Deutsche Bank where he most recently worked in the Credit Solutions Group and was responsible for the origination, trading and risk management of a broad range of illiquid credit investments including commercial real estate mezzanine loans, non-performing loans, CDO’s, asset based loans, ABS, esoteric financings and structured corporate loans.

Mr. McDonnell received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.