Sandy Presant
Partner
Chairman, Real Estate Fund Practice at Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Sandy Presant is the chairman of Greenberg Traurig's international real estate fund practice. He focuses his practice on providing fund and joint venture best practice business and tax structuring advice to sponsors of the leading opportunity funds, REITs, and their local partners and investors in the US and internationally.

Mr. Presant is a well-known author and frequent speaker on numerous tax issues, including opportunity fund, REIT, LLC, and partnership structures; business and tax negotiations for limited partnerships and limited liability companies; structuring internal general partner executive compensation and co-investment programs; investments by pension trusts, endowments, private foundations, and other tax-exempt entities on a tax-free (UBTI-free) basis; offshore blocker structures; corporate joint ventures; tax aspects of workouts, debt restructurings, and foreclosures; like-kind exchanges; and UPREIT operating partnerships.

Prior to joining Greenberg Traurig, Sandy was the Chairman of DLA Piper's Real Estate Fund Services Group. Before joining DLA, he was the National Co-Director for Real Estate Fund Services at Ernst & Young, where he supervised a partnership agreement diagnostic process that provided fund general partners with recommendations about industry best practices that reduce risk and costs in funds, joint ventures and within the general partner group. Mr. Presant also was a principal author of the first three E&Y real estate fund surveys and white papers (2002-2005). Representative clients include more than 50 of the leading private equity fund sponsors and a number of public and private REITs. As both a tax and business advisor for over 30 years for major real estate companies, funds, investment banks, REITS and insurance companies, he has structured and negotiated the business and tax aspects for over 500 major real estate joint ventures and private equity fund partnerships.

Marjorie A. Knitter

Marjorie A. Knitter is the president of The Moote Group, a full service land management firm that assists developers, builders, lenders and portfolio managers in all aspects of land development management and infrastructure programs from entitlement through finished lots.

The Moote Group was established in 1974 for the purpose of assisting Developers, Builders, Government Agencies, Local Agencies, and Lenders in all aspects of their land development and infrastructure programs with heavy emphasis on project feasibility, public bid and contract administration, value engineering, and construction management.

The Moote Group has emerged as a recognized authority in the field of estimating infrastructure costs associated with residential and commercial land-development projects.  The Moote name is well known in the industry for accurate, timely, and complete cost estimates and for the ability to manage the work in the field.

Lawrence S. Brewster

Larry Brewster is Chairman and Co-founder of Portfolio Property Advisors, LLC, a national real estate consulting firm specializing in locating and financing negotiated acquisitions of commercial properties and portfolios. Larry’s 30 years in industry includes both domestic and international experience in real estate, software and health care. His expertise has focused on bringing new commercial real estate concepts to market as well as strategic planning, operations and tax related consulting to real estate developers and investors across several classes of assets.

Before starting PPA, Larry was the Managing Director of the O’Connor & Associates’ national practice comprised of appraisal, tax reduction, valuation, market analysis and due diligence services to commercial real estate owners, investors and operators representing more than $10 Billion in real estate assets.

Larry is a member of the National Board of Directors of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP). Larry is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and has real estate license credentials in the states of Texas and Massachusetts.

Bruce Beck

Bruce Beck is founder and principal of Westlake Village, California-based DB&R Marketing Communications, which specializes in the representation of firms in the commercial real estate and financial services industries. A public relations veteran whose career has spanned nearly three decades, Beck has received numerous awards and accolades for the skillful execution of campaigns for clients in entertainment, consumer electronics professional sports, international trade and real estate and financial services. Beck earned a BA in communication theory from Pepperdine University. He is a member of the National Association of Real Estate Editors and Urban Land Institute where he sits on the Inner City and Urban Policy Committee of the Los Angeles District Council. He also is a member of the board of the Ventura County Junior Golf Association.

Ron Buss

Ron Buss is the President of Buss-Shelger Associates, a Los Angeles - based real estate advisory and consulting firm. Founded in 1984, Buss-Shelger advices its clients and provides various real estate services, including investment, valuation, brokerage and leasing, on all types of vacant and improved properties. Mr. Buss has served as an advisor to pension funds and as an investment advisor to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. He is an MAI appraiser and a licensed real estate broker with 40 years of experience in the real estate industry. Mr. Buss served as International President of the Land Economics Foundation, President of the Southern California Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, a member of the Assessment Practices Advisory Council of the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office, and is a member of the Los Angeles Board of Realtors, the California Real Estate Association and the Urban Land Institute.


Chip Conley

Founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and Author, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

Chip Conley is the founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California's largest boutique hotel company which was founded in 1987. At the age of 26 with no industry experience, Chip created The Phoenix, taking a 1950's seedy motel and turning it into a world-renowned "rock 'n roll hotel" that catered to celebrities from David Bowie to Linda Ronstadt. Building on transformational leadership practices, and an innovative design formula that enables customers to experience an "identity refreshment," the company now consists of over 40 unique and award-winning hotels, restaurants and spas across the state with over 3,000 employees and revenues approaching $250 million. Joie de Vivre was awarded the 2nd Best Place to Work in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008. Chip and his company's time-tested techniques have been featured in TIME, Fast Company, Fortune, People and the Wall Street Journal.

Chip has been honored with top hospitality industry awards and, in 2008, Chip was selected as one of four finalists for the 2008 "Corporate Hotelier of World" award by the prestigious Hotels magazine. Chip is a big believer in giving back to the community and is recognized as a committed and creative philanthropist. He is the founder of San Francisco's Annual Celebrity Pool Toss, which has raised over $3 million for inner city youth programs now thriving in the troubled neighborhood where he launched his first hotel. He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization and received his BA and MBA from Stanford University. In 2007, Chip was named the Bay Area's Most Innovative CEO by the SF Business Times, among business leaders across all industries in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco and East Bay business communities.


Stephen Alter

Founder / CEO

Stephen J. Alter founded Real Capital Markets in late 1999. Mr. Alter has 20 years experience in real estate acquisitions, finance and equity joint ventures. Working for Heitman, JMB Institutional, The Related Companies and Fairfield Residential, he was instrumental in the acquisition and capitalization of over one billion dollars in transaction value.

Stephen Alter has a BBA degree with an emphasis on real estate finance from Southern Methodist University. He has been a licensed real estate broker since 1981 and is an active member of ICSC, NMHC, ULI and is a licensed real estate professional in the State of New York.





Matt Kaempf 

Matt Kaempf is a managing partner at Remediation Risk Management, Inc. of Santa Cruz, California where he develops and oversees strategies for maximizing land value and income potential for contaminated real property while reducing risks and expenditures for deed holders and responsible parties. Mr. Kaempf has 20 years of experience in contaminated property assessment, compliance and clean up and has worked extensively on residential, commercial and industrial projects throughout the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas, and the Central Valley and Southern California Regions. He has a thorough understanding of working within the framework of various government agencies to cost effectively meet compliance issues and minimize or eliminate risks associated with contamination. In addition, Mr. Kaempf has extensive experience with government funded property clean up programs such as the State of California Underground Storage Tank Cleanup Fund which reimburses responsible parties for environmental cleanup costs. Mr. Kaempf has managed hundreds of property assessment and cleanup projects involving California real estate with an aggregate value over $200 million dollars. Mr. Kaempf earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California Santa Cruz and is a licensed General Engineering Contractor with Hazardous Materials Certification.


Scott Singletary

Scott Singletary has over 20 years experience in banking and real estate finance. He started with Bank South, a large Atlanta bank, beginning in Audit and then was promoted to Credit Exam Officer. Later, he joined Summit National a smaller community bank where he became Vice President, Commercial Real Estate Lender; while there he established commercial real estate underwriting procedures and handled problem loans, high risk and special situation loans. He structured one of the first mixed use retail/office condo projects in Atlanta. He successfully originated and underwrote a special situation leasehold mortgage on 10 acres of land with over 100,000 sq. ft. of retail space at a prime Atlanta location. Scott founded and ran his own conforming residential mortgage company. He has also done consultant work in the area of commercial project redevelopment. Scott holds an undergraduate degree with a major in finance from Georgia State University.