Broker Alexandra Sesi has moved north from Los Angeles to join Kilroy Realty's life science leasing team in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the sector is showing signs of bouncing back after several tough years.
Sesi comes from JLL, where she spent the last three years in the real estate services firm’s LA office, climbing from intern to analyst to associate. Her title at Kilroy, a California-based real estate investment trust, will be senior manager of life science leasing.
On LinkedIn, she cited the REIT’s goal of “creating innovative, high-quality life science spaces that support scientific advancement and improve patient outcomes.”
She has a background in life science. Sesi graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor's degree in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and worked for just over a year as a research assistant at the university’s Molecular Cognition Laboratory before going to JLL in 2022, according to LinkedIn. At JLL, Sesi was on the West Coast life sciences team, where she represented institutional landlords and life science companies across various stages of growth.
In recent months, Kilroy has said surging demand across its West Coast portfolio has hit a level to help push it back into the black, pointing to strengthening leasing activity among tech tenants that until now were more focused on shedding rather than adding space. In a recent earnings call, Kilroy highlighted the improving environment in the San Francisco Bay Area.
One of its prize projects is Kilroy Oyster Point, a premier 50-acre waterfront campus in the life sciences hub of South San Francisco. Kilroy paid $111 million, or around $762 per square foot, for the property, which encompasses approximately 865,000 square feet across three buildings and aims to provide an “incubator of ideas” for life sciences researchers.
The San Francisco Bay Area’s life science real estate market has rebounded in the first months of 2025 following a difficult few years, Senior Director of CoStar Market Analytics Nigel Hughes noted in a recent analysis. An upturn in leasing activity, combined with a slowdown in the construction pipeline, has stemmed the rise in the sector’s vacancy rate, resulting in the highest level of positive net absorption of the past five years.
The vacancy rate in San Francisco’s flex and research-and-development segment increased from 7% in 2022 to more than 22% in 2024. In the past few months, though, the market has seen the delivery of new pre-leased buildings and an uptick in new lease activity.