Place Properties :: Our Company

Cecil Phillips
Chairman / Chief Executive Officer
B.A. with Honors in History, University of Missouri
J.D., University of Michigan

Cecil Phillips is Chairman and CEO of Place Properties, L.P., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mr. Phillips was born and raised in Missouri, and has lived in Atlanta since 1971. He received his B.A. with honors in Diplomatic History from the University of Missouri in 1968 and his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1971.

From 1971-1979, Mr. Phillips was an associate and then a partner in the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird. From 1979-1983, he was Special Assistant and Executive Assistant to the Governor of Georgia.

In 1984, Mr. Phillips founded Phillips International (the predecessor to Place Properties). That firm specialized in U.S. real estate and corporate finance opportunities for its offshore clients. The real estate projects financed and developed by the firm included on-campus and off-campus student housing at major U.S. colleges and universities, medical office buildings, shopping centers, multi-family housing projects, hotels, golf courses, resorts and residential developments, as well as land held for commercial and recreational development.

Mr. Phillips has financed, developed and overseen the development of more than 30,000 bedrooms of on-campus and off-campus housing at 30 different campuses, including a hotel conversion to student housing in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.

Mr. Phillips has served on the boards of directors of publicly held financial institutions, including serving as chair of a publicly held federally-chartered bank holding company.

Mr. Phillips has also recently served as a member of the Board of Directors of Research Atlanta, Inc., the Georgia Lottery Corporation, Chairman of the Board of Visitors at Emory University and Chair of the Georgia Policy Council on Children and Families. Mr. Phillips is a Commissioner and Chairman of the Atlanta Housing Authority, Chairman of the Dean’s Council of the Emory University School of Public Health, Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Howard School, and Chairman of the Atlanta Regional Board of Teach For America. Mr. Phillips has been a member of The Council on Foreign Relations since 1997.

Mr. Phillips is married. He and his wife Carol have three daughters, Megan, Chesley and Lydia.