Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC, an internationally-recognized private equity real estate investment firm, is pleased to announce that Ericka L. Ayles and Mark J. Daniels have each been promoted to partner of the firm.
“Ericka and Mark have each made outstanding contributions to the firm as integral members of our senior management team. Both are well respected by colleagues and clients for their financial acumen, integrity, and depth of experience and have been tremendous assets for our firm,” said Thomas Nicholas Trkla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brookwood. “It is a great pleasure to celebrate their achievements, and we are proud to welcome them to the partnership.”
Ms. Ayles is a Managing Director and the Chief Financial Officer for Brookwood and Chief Financial Officer of Yesway. She oversees all of Brookwood’s and Yesway’s financial operations, accounting, tax reporting, budgeting, audit, and cash management processes, as well as banking relationships and the implementation of financial and risk management strategies for Brookwood and its affiliated entities. Ms. Ayles analyzes the impact of acquisitions, potential sales, property re-financings and other upcoming capital requirements to make strategic recommendations for investor distributions while ensuring adequate levels of reserves. She also oversees the firm’s corporate financial planning function and quarterly financial reporting to its investors and is responsible for the development and maintenance of adequate internal controls. She serves as the Company’s Financial and Operational Principal, overseeing Brookwood’s regulatory financial reporting and is a member of Brookwood’s Executive and Investment Committees.
Prior to joining Brookwood, Ms. Ayles worked for JDJ Family Office Services, a private financial and administrative service company for high-net-worth families and individuals. Previously, she served as a Vice President of Portfolio and Financial Reporting at New Boston Fund, Inc., where she was directly involved with property, portfolio, and fund accounting. Ms. Ayles began her career in public accounting at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP as an Associate and Senior Associate focusing on technology and higher education clients.
Ms. Ayles is a graduate of Bryant College. In 2017, she completed the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and in 2021 was recognized as a Woman of the Year in the annual Convenience Store News “Top Women in Convenience” awards program, after being honored as a Senior Level Leader in 2019.
Mr. Daniels is a Managing Director and serves as the firm’s Chief Strategy Officer. He has been instrumental in identifying, evaluating, and recommending strategies and specific opportunities for investment, most significantly the recession-resistant characteristics of the convenience retailing industry. This led to the establishment of BW Gas & Convenience Holdings, LLC, which was founded in 2015 and operates the Yesway brand of convenience stores. As one of the country’s fastest-growing convenience store chains, Yesway’s rapidly expanding portfolio currently consists of 402 stores located in Texas, New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, including, most recently, the 304-store Allsup’s Convenience Stores chain.
Prior to joining Brookwood, Mr. Daniels was a senior operations consultant with Stroud Consulting, where his work leading client teams to drive process improvements resulted in millions of dollars in annual savings. At Stroud, he worked extensively for a multi-national oil producer, exporter, and retailer and a major food-service processor and manufacturer, where his specific areas of expertise were in the consolidation and roll-up of facilities, network optimization, capital-free cost reduction, and the optimization of capital projects. He also served as the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Field Theory, an international software company specializing in the applied numerical simulations of sports.
Mr. Daniels serves as Secretary of the Board of The Princeton Tiger, Inc. He is an active member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society, and the Canadian and American Mathematical Societies. He remains the Chairman of the Board of Digital Field Theory and serves on numerous executive and advisory boards. Mr. Daniels is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where he also received his master’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Both Mr. Daniels and Ms. Ayles were instrumental in the success of Yesway’s recent acquisition of the 304-store Allsup’s Convenience Stores chain, one of the largest acquisitions in the c-store space – from driving the integration of the two companies, to establishing Yesway’s new headquarters location in Fort Worth, TX, to securing upgrades to Yesway’s corporate and credit facility ratings, and to overseeing the integration of updated back-office and point-of-sale systems, including PDI, across the entire Yesway and Allsup’s portfolio.
About Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC – Brookwood is an internationally recognized private equity real estate investment firm that specializes in acquiring and managing value-add commercial real estate and related operating businesses on behalf of a select group of institutional investors, including endowments, pension funds and foundations, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Since its inception, Brookwood has invested over $1.7 billion of equity to acquire a portfolio of 200 commercial real estate properties, seven operating companies and 451 gas stations and convenience stores. The firm’s $3.6 billion historical portfolio has spanned multiple asset classes, geographical markets and industries across the United States.
