I grew up in Puerto Rico, then went to Wharton, where I studied accounting and finance. My father was an attorney and told me not to be a lawyer, so naturally I attended law school at Columbia and went to work at Latham and Watkins. There, I was exposed to everything from telecom deals in South America to real estate development.

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After Latham, I had my first child, moved back to Puerto Rico, and started working at McConnell Valdes. I started to represent Tishman on some of their deals and began working closely with David Rothenberg, John Vickers, Dan Tishman, and Dan Unger. After providing day-to-day coverage for Tishman, I eventually moved back to New York to come in-house, handling our projects in Puerto Rico.

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At Tishman, I provided legal support but also started getting more hands-on with transactions. I worked on the exit of Rio Mar and continued to work on Sheraton Old San Juan. Eventually, I started to get integrated into our assets in Florida and focused on the WDW Swan Reserve, which was deeply fulfilling as I got to work with the Disney and MetLife teams from deal conception to design through opening.

Over this period, I had to manage some ups and downs with the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and then COVID. Somehow, we managed to get through with our sanity intact and earned a few wins I can look back at with a sense of accomplishment. We opened a hotel during a pandemic, sold a hotel at a huge profit in a market many had written off, and acquired one of the first distressed bulk condo deals in New York.

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When I look at deals, I spend a lot of time on the thesis. You need to be immersed and knowledgeable about the market, but you also must understand what strategic path will create the most value. I look at risk-reward, downside mitigation, and opportunity cost when I try to determine where and how we will spend the dollars. If we can build a high level of conviction in our thesis, I think we can find value in the deal and achieve outsized returns.