Getting in the Game: The Entrepreneurs Perspective

Moderator

Peter Aldrich
Founder,
AEW Capital Management

Peter C. Aldrich is a life long entrepreneur and educator. He loves to discover new ideas and build teams to explore the benefits of those musings. His current activities center on seed capital and international capital formation. Mr. Aldrich was a pioneer in the investment of American pension capital into real estate. He was the founder of the Pension Real Estate Association, of The Boston Company Real Estate Counsel, Inc., and with Tom Eastman and Mark Waltch, of Aldrich Eastman Waltch, L.P. (now known as AEW Capital Management), one of the nation’s largest property investment advisory firms. He was graduated from the Phillips Exeter Academy (of which he was a longtime Trustee), from Harvard College and from its Business School. (He served on Harvard’s Visiting Committee on University Resources). He is a past faculty member of the Yale School of Organization and Management and of the Harvard Business School. He is also a Trustee of Bard College, a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Trustee of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and of the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, and formerly a Governor of the Jerome S. Levy Economics Institute, and a past Trustee of Simon’s Rock, ("the Early College"), of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and of the Shady Hill School.

Mr. Aldrich was founder and chairman of AEGIS, LLC (formerly AEW International), which had affiliate investment companies in Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. He was the Co-Chairman of the Sichuan Foreign Investment Advisory Board and was formerly a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. More importantly, Peter is retired and enjoys time with his children, swimming, fly-fishing, baseball, motorcycling, water coloring, ancient Greek pottery, golf, American painting, astronomy, model trains and any good book, good company, or good friend.

Dan Dubrowski
Founding Principal,
The Lionstone Group

Dan is a founding principal of The Lionstone Group. He serves as an Investment Committee member and as the lead principal responsible for Lionstone's national Cash Flow Office and US Land investment programs. He is also the firm's Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to forming Lionstone, Dan was a senior officer with Hines. During his ten year career with Hines, Dan led Hines' first domestic acquisition, first large-scale international development and took responsibility for Hines' business in Mexico. Dan built the Mexican operation from inception and ultimately supervised 150 employees. Dan developed the firm's first foreign industrial parks and first high-rise residential buildings. He also sourced and closed Hines' first international acquisition.

Dan is a graduate of Georgetown University and received his MBA in 1990 from Harvard.

Jair Lynch
Founder and CEO,
Jair Lynch Companies

Jair has twelve years experience in real estate development and construction with significant work involving office, institutional and multi family residential development. In 1998, he founded The Jair Lynch Companies (JLC), in which he has worked diligently to apply his knowledge and development expertise to build projects that have a positive impact on the community. While directly involved as an advisor to JLC Staff on all aspects of the development process, Mr. Lynch focuses his efforts on cultivating new project and partnership opportunities. JLC seeks to develop neighborhoods holistically by creating a live, work, play and learn environments in which communities can grow.

Jair is also an active member of several nonprofit boards of directors, including US Olympic Committee, DC Building Industry Association, Manna Inc., In 2 Books, Greater Washington Sports Alliance, and the Recreation Wish List Committee. Jair was also instrumental in organization such as Cultural Tourism DC, DC 2012 Olympic Coalition, and the Fannie Mae Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Affordable Housing Leadership.

Jair was a two-time member of the United States Olympic Team. In 1996, as captain of the US Olympic gymnastics team, he won a silver medal on the parallel bars. He also was a twelve time All American at Stanford University and captain of Stanford’s two-time NCAA National Championship gymnastics team in 1992 and 1993. Jair is also a member of the Stanford Hall of Fame and the US Gymnastics Hall of Fame. While at Stanford, he earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.A. in Urban Design. He is also a graduate of Leadership Washington in 2002 and John L. Loeb Fellow from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Mark Sanders
Founder and CEO,
Fifteen Group

Mark Sanders currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Fifteen Group, an opportunity-driven, full-service real estate organization that has historically focused on providing safe, decent, and affordable rental housing in growing U.S. markets in the Southeast, Southwest, and California. A significant part of Fifteen Group's investment strategy has been the acquisition, rehabilitation, and repositioning of distressed or under-managed assets, and Fifteen Group has achieved a high level of success with these types of value-added transactions. Fifteen Group is equally proud of its successful history of acquiring under-valued product from institutional sellers and creating value through aggressive management and effective deployment of new capital. While Mr. Sanders and his brother Ian are the entrepreneurial spirit behind Fifteen Group and jointly handle the executive management, Mr. Sanders’ primary responsibilities include strategic planning, acquisitions, and development. With support and encouragement from his wife and two children, Mr. Sanders has helped build Fifteen Group into a respected entrepreneurial real estate firm that has acquired over 18,000 multifamily units and continues to pursue its diverse investment strategies both domestically and abroad.

Prior to founding Fifteen Group in 1992, Mr. Sanders was a Vice President at the Stiles Corporation, South Florida’s leading full-service commercial real estate development company. Before joining Stiles, Mr. Sanders was an associate with the ADCO Group, a real estate and financial services firm then controlling over $5.5 billion in assets. Mr. Sanders is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Multi Housing Council. Mr. Sanders received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance and Real Estate from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph C. Smith
Founding Principal,
Glenmont Capital Management

Mr. Smith is one of two initial principals of Glenmont Capital Management, LLC and, along with his partner, is responsible for the investing activities of its affiliated opportunity funds, including identifying investment opportunities, investment analysis, and the oversight of the management, financing and administration of the funds' investments. Glenmont is a privately held real estate investment management firm headquartered in New York, which focuses on the investment of equity capital in privately held, value added real estate opportunities exhibiting the potential for yielding annual returns in excess of 20%. Glenmont typically invests in small to midsize assets, which require $5 to $15 million of equity capital per transaction, on behalf of its discretionary opportunity funds, which are composed primarily of private and public institutional investors, including Fortune 500 pension plans and well known university endowments. Through its funds, Glenmont has acquired or has under development in excess of 2,000 apartment units, nearly 3 million square feet of industrial properties, 1 million square feet of retail and over 4,500 hotel rooms. Among Glenmont's investments are the ground-up development of multifamily and industrial properties, the privatization of a former military installation, the rehabilitation of a regional mall, the redevelopment of brown field sites and the repositioning of several hotels. Glenmont is in the process of investing its second fund, which is capitalized sufficiently to ultimately acquire and/or develop in excess of $500 million of real estate assets. Glenmont's first fund invested in assets which exceed $250 million in cost.

Prior to Glenmont, Mr. Smith was at the Real Estate Private Equity Group at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown where he was involved in over $150 million in real estate debt and private equity investments in hotel, office and retail properties around the country. Among his responsibilities were underwriting and executing equity and mezzanine loan investments in real estate, as well as the day-to-day operations for the BT Real Estate Mezzanine Investment Fund, LLC. Before Deutsche Bank, Mr. Smith was an investment banker at Banc of America Securities (fka Montgomery Securities) where he worked on over 30 real estate investment banking transactions representing over $3 billion. His experience includes transactions in mergers and acquisitions, public equity offerings and high yield bond offerings. Mr. Smith graduated with the degree of masters of business administration from Columbia University Business School and earned a B.S. degree in finance, with honors, from Santa Clara University. He is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma at both universities.