Kyle Rawlins

Kyle Rawlins is a co-founder of BIG Oakland, a coworking space dedicated to the architecture, engineering, construction and real estate industry.

In 2018, the San Francisco Business Times included BIG in its Upstart 50 business creators of the Bay Area. He is also a co-founder of Oakland-based Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), a public interest architecture and real estate development firm focused on addressing the root causes of mass incarceration. DJDS is a winner of the ArtPlace America 2017 National Creative Creative Placemaking Fund.

Kyle has been active in the analysis, financing, design, development, construction and management of real estate in North and South America for more than 20 years. In addition to pursuing development projects, Kyle has consulted to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the development of a solution for how might NYCHA, as landlords with a mission to help residents grow their income and assets, spearhead the creation of an economic development model to empower unemployed, unbanked, credit challenged “NYCHApreneurs” so that they may access capital to build sustainable, livable wage producing businesses.

Before attending graduate school, Kyle worked as a mergers and acquisitions financial analyst for Salomon Brothers in New York City. While at Salomon, Mr. Rawlins focused on restructuring distressed companies in the retail, media, consumer products, and transportation sectors. Mr. Rawlins’ professional experiences have enabled him to develop a highly sophisticated knowledge of the capital markets, deal structuring, and financial analysis. Kyle has also worked for the Chase Manhattan Bank, Hines and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Architects (HOK). His professional design experience includes the redevelopment of the Uganda Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

Kyle is an Echoing Green Fellow – 2016 Black Male Achievement Cohort. Kyle holds a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a recent addition to the faculty community of the University of California, Berkeley where he taught equitable community development for the Master of Real Estate Development + Design program.