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As a kid I experienced the jungle adventure of three epic family road trips, one every five years, driving a vintage VW bus (twice) and a Thing (jeep; once) for months at a time from California through Mexico, and all of Central and South America, through tropical deserts, the Andes, and Amazon jungles, mile by mile, camping roadside.

I watched natives in Lake Titicaca negotiate with my father to buy my baby sister.  I caught and played with venomous frogs and reptiles.  I swam in piranha, leach, and eel infested rivers.  I’ve stepped in quicksand (quickmud), and been bit by poisonous spiders, bullet ants, and huge jungle wasps. 

I fought off a military thug attacker in Buenos Aires and even got shot at and arrested when I was but 15 years old by a Bolivian military outfit who suspected that my family was complicit in the assassination of Anastasio Somoza, the exiled former president and dictator of Nicaragua, who was hanging out with another fellow dictator, General Alfredo Stoessner, the Paraguayan president.

I survived the high Andes, wild Amazon jungles, and the streets of the Mexican cartels, the Nicaraguan Contras and Sandinistas, the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso (countryside revolutionaries who used violent terrorism), and even the Argentine ‘Dirty War’ that disappeared thousands.  I experienced military and police checkpoint harassment and shakedowns in many countries, and even survived a murder attempt and arrest in Bolivia, but all that was child’s play.

I discovered the real jungle was doing business in New York City. 

My career path started in California in the aerospace industry in quality control and the manufacturing of aerospace components.  I switched industries and in 1992 earned a BS in engineering and construction management.  I worked for a  real estate developer in California, then a developer in Israel to build a mall, and in 1997 got married and moved to the Big Apple.  

I started out conducting due diligence on the purchase of three iconic NYC downtown buildings covering over a million square feet, planned their redevelopment, and worked concurrently as a project manager for the developer of the Textile Building at 66 Leonard Street in Tribeca, NYC, a 130,000 square foot office conversion into luxury loft style condominiums.  

Architecture, engineering, design, asset and finance analysis, project management, and doing deals was all kind of fun.  I soon realized though that these fun vocations were really just processes that I knew a lot about, and that my main vocation and skill and that of every owner or business leader is twofold: 

1) Creating and running a profitable business, and

2) Anticipating, avoiding, and regaining control after unexpected obstacles and detours.

In short, “Make money, but don’t lose it”.

My first NYC development project soon meant strategizing in the face of the unexpected and unpredictable:

• Vetting, hiring and managing the expert landlord tenant attorney to evict the building’s tenant (a NYC agency) who was freeloading in the space without paying rent and didn’t want to leave, and attempting to limit billing charges without hindering the law firm’s performance,

• finding and paying an undercover lobbyist to get the mayor to induce the tenant to vacate faster,

• managing the squabbling and litigation that erupted between partners on this deal meanwhile trying to keep the project on track all the way through completion,

• Dealing with labor unions and other community labor groups, their protests, and mafia like intimidation to force payoffs, and get their people and companies hired,

• Staying clear of Landmarks, the DOB, OSHA, DEP and all the government agency enforcers who ravish and penalize, not unlike the south of the border thugs that I encountered in youth.

Upon completion of the Textile Building, I founded a firm brokering construction financing, consulting, cost engineering, and problem solving projects for developers and owners, managed significant litigation efforts, as well as invested in and developed my own real estate.

I look back over the last twenty five years in New York and realize that real estate was a backdrop to my career.  My main vocation is problem prevention, risk and liability mitigation, strategy, solutions and the ability to go granular in most fields so that I can understand whether a professional is on the right track, and then directing them.

I’ve hit bumps along the way and taken many detours.  I’m all the better for it.  Carpenters say “measure twice, cut once”.  If you are doing business in a hostile and aggressive environment like the streets of New York, I say “look both ways, even on a one way street”.

I am a single father with a gaggle of children nine to twenty-four years old, one who had Marfan syndrome and valiantly lived into his fourth year.  My kids and the time spent with them are the greatest part of my adventure.

I am lucky to have entered the fray in so many areas of life and look forward to helping you and your organization.