Speakers
Use the letters to quickly find a speaker by last name.
Use the letters to quickly find a speaker by last name.
Tray Abney is a partner of the Abney Tauchen Group (ATG), offering a wide range of services to help navigate Nevada’s complex political landscape. He is proud to have represented clients in the retail, agricultural, pharmacy, health insurance, behavioral health services, energy efficiency, and drone delivery industries before local, state and federal government entities. Prior to co-founding ATG, Abney served as the director of government relations for The Reno+Sparks Chamber of Commerce for over ten years and was responsible for ensuring that the largest broad-based business organization in Northern Nevada had a voice at all levels of government, including city, county, state and federal. Abney has experienced nine legislative sessions (so far) and has been a key voice on business and taxation/government spending and efficiency issues in Carson City. He has successfully helped steer critical bills to signature (and veto) and maintains great relationships with elected officials from throughout Nevada and on both sides of the political aisle.
After turning pro at the age of 16, tennis prodigy Andre Agassi rose to international fame, earning 60 men’s singles titles, including eight Grand Slam singles championships, over a 20-year career. A former World No. 1 player, Agassi is the first male player ever to win all four Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal. His candid autobiography, Open, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and continues to hit record sales internationally.
While his tennis career took him all over the world, Agassi always stayed connected to his hometown of Las Vegas. After retiring in 2006, Agassi increased his focus on his foundation, the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, and promoting education reform. In 2011, he partnered with Turner Impact Capital on an innovative new real estate fund – the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund – to promote the success and growth of best-in-class charter schools in urban communities across the United States. As of 2024, the fund has opened 122 schools, serving over 100,000 students in some of the most economically challenged neighborhoods in America.
He is married to tennis superstar, philanthropist and businesswoman Stefanie Graf. The family resides in Las Vegas.
Trent Agnew is a senior managing director in the Houston office of JLL Capital Markets, Americas. He joined JLL as part of the HFF acquisition and is primarily responsible for industrial investment advisory throughout Texas. Agnew co-heads the industrial group nationally and is responsible for industrial sales on behalf of private and institutional clients in the Southwest U.S. Over the course of his career, he has been involved in closing more than $17 billion in transactions.
Jeremy Aguero is research analyst known for his in-depth expertise in economic analysis, public policy, and strategic planning. With a career spanning over two decades, he has played a pivotal role in shaping economic strategies and policies for various governmental and private entities. Aguero’s work has included successful projects economic development, fiscal policy, and market analysis, making him a sought-after advisor and speaker in economic circles. His analytical acumen and dedication to fostering sustainable economic growth have earned him a reputation as a leading voice in the field.
Damon Austin is managing director, global head of Customer Led Development (CLD). His team is accountable for build-to-suit transactions for Prologis’ largest and fastest-growing multi-market customers. Austin is also responsible for leading Prologis' global data center strategy and team. This capability was built to ensure Prologis is value optimizing our portfolio of energized buildings and land. Previously, Austin was the head of capital deployment for the U.S. West region where he oversaw all investment and development activity. Austin has a BA in English from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Benjamin Blair, Esq. has represented taxpayers – including downtown office towers, suburban office complexes, and industrial developments – in administrative and judicial proceedings in two dozen states coast-to-coast. As part of Faegre Drinker’s national property tax appeal group, Blair is on the forefront of assessment disputes involving the definition of taxable property rights, the separation of real property and business value, and value-in-use versus value-in-exchange. An avid speaker and author on tax and valuation issues, Blair also serves as the legal columnist for The Appraisal Journal. He is a graduate of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he also serves as an adjunct professor of state and local taxation.
Tony Burkart serves as head of market and economic development at Google, advising regional delivery and global infrastructure teams on economic development, public policy, and site selection best practices. Burkart’s guiding principle is creating win-win solutions for companies and governments across all levels. He leads discussions with state and local government agencies, regulatory, planning, permitting, and taxing authorities in support of infrastructure development teams. Burkart has over a decade of in-house economic development experience at Amazon Web Services, Lockheed Martin, and the State of Florida. He has led projects in Canada, France, the Middle East, and in Columbus, Ohio.
Toby Burke is the associate vice president of state and local affairs for NAIOP Corporate in Washington, D.C. In this capacity, he serves as a resource for NAIOP chapters in developing and executing legislative strategies on policies initiatives within the states. He also serves as a liaison between NAIOP Corporate and chapters on our federal priorities. Prior to joining NAIOP, he served as a special assistant to the president in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, where he served as President George W. Bush’s liaison with mayors, local officials, state attorneys general and the U.S. Territories. In this capacity, he educated public officials, their offices and national organizations on the president’s initiatives and priorities.
Jim Costello is chief economist on the MSCI Real Assets team and is based in New York. He is the principal author of the U.S. Capital Trends report series. At Real Capital Analytics, which MSCI acquired in 2021, Costello was a leader for analysis across the commercial property universe. He also spent two decades at Torto Wheaton Research working on issues of real estate risk and forecasting.
Carmen Decker currently serves as the president of Kimco’s Western region overseeing approximately 169 shopping centers in the Western U.S. consisting of 33.5 million square feet. In this capacity, Decker is responsible for strategic planning, acquisitions, asset management, dispositions, leasing, property management, construction and development. Decker holds a B.A. from University of Washington and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School Program in Leadership Development. She is a licensed real estate broker in Washington, a member of CREW Seattle and ICSC. She also sits on the boards of BNBuilders, Friends of the Children – Seattle and U of W Friends of the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs.
Kristina Feller is a seasoned leader and executive in the real estate development industry. She has been directly involved in and applied experience in most facets of the industry including urban planning, strategic planning, business planning, financing, project and program management, and development management servicing in real estate, capital infrastructure, design and construction. She has executed all levels and aspects of finance, project and construction management leadership for multi-phased infrastructure, real estate and development programs globally.
Nikki Greenberg is a world-leading futurist focused on the trends and technologies shaping cities of the future. A true digital nomad with an international career that has spanned the U.S., Asia, and Australia, she has held cross-functional leadership positions with a focus on innovation and design. She’ll explore the convergence of real space and cyberspace, sharing the possibilities of emerging technologies and introducing innovative ways of thinking.
Steve Hill is the CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the destination marketing organization that promotes and attracts tourism, conventions, meetings, sports and special events to Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The LVCVA also owns and operates the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), the premier destination for meetings and conventions in the United States. Under Hill’s leadership, the LVCC debuted its $1 billion, 1.4 million-square-foot expansion in June 2021. The $600 million renovation of the existing campus will be complete by the end of 2025. In conjunction with the convention center expansion, Hill brought the Loop to the convention center. This underground transportation system, built and operated by The Boring Company, offers guests an innovative, fun and free way to move around the convention center campus. He is actively involved in bringing its larger application – the 65-mile Vegas Loop tunnel network – to the Strip, downtown Las Vegas, and Allegiant Stadium. Hill also spearheaded the LVCVA’s acquisition of the 3.9-mile Las Vegas Monorail in 2020, bringing it into profitability in under two years.
Laura Hyde is Link’s managing director, Investments, overseeing acquisitions for the Central region. She has been with Link since 2019, joining the firm through its integration with Talos Capital, where she began working in 2017. At Link, Hyde has completed acquisitions of more than 300 buildings totaling over 39 million square feet valued at more than $3 billion. Prior to Talos, she was a senior financial analyst with Pritzker Realty Group, where she worked on over $127 million of industrial acquisitions and ground-up developments representing 2.1 million square feet. Before Pritzker, she was an associate at Oak Street Real Estate Capital and a private equity analyst at Morgan Creek Capital Management. Hyde earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Cornell University. She is a member of Industrial Women in Real Estate, the Urban Land Institute and a NAIOP National Forum, and serves on the national planning committee for the NAIOP CRE.Converge 2024 conference.
Laura Krashakova is the founder and CEO of Smart Capital Center – an AI-powered underwriting, portfolio insight, and debt management platform used by the largest commercial real estate lenders and investors today. The platform helps drive ROI and cut transaction costs by eliminating routine manual work and leveraging data at scale. Krashakova is a trusted advisor to top investment and asset management firms including JLL, KeyBank, Pacific Life Insurance and The RMR Group, helping digitize, automate, and bring insight to every step of the investment and lending transaction from acquisition to disposition.
Charlotte Lamping serves as the Mission Critical Practice Manager at Henderson Engineers after spending most of her career in boots-on-the-ground management roles on data center, power transmission, and industrial projects across the country. She received her bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from the University of Kansas and her master’s in business administration from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. She is dedicated to working with the project team to deliver the highest standard of MEP design consulting services and achieve successful completion on each and every one of her projects.
For the past 20 years, Adam Mullen has worked in or on industrial and logistics real estate. Today, he leads KBC Advisors, a modern and purpose-built real estate services firm with an extreme dedication to clients and each other. Prior to his efforts at KBC Advisors, Mullen spent time at CBRE and Fortna – experiences that he deeply cherishes – where he held various leadership positions that afforded him the opportunity to help clients, grow professionally and learn how best to serve those around him.
Dennis Norton is a senior consultant at Wipfli LLP, specializing in the business intelligence consulting space. He collaborates with clients across industries such as CRE to architect unique analytic solutions and guide companies to successfully navigating the changing data landscape. With his ability to bridge the gap between technology and business objectives, his clients are empowered to take their data analytics to the next level and turn raw data into real-world insights.
Angela Otto is a real estate shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where she routinely closes more than $1 billion in real estate transactions annually. Clients seek out her general commercial counsel when looking to acquire or dispose of hotels other businesses and/or real property, develop or lease real property, or obtain financing. Recent examples of her significant work include acting as Nevada counsel to Apollo Global Management in its $2.25 billion acquisition of the Venetian Resort and Sands Expo and Convention Center, as well as acting as Nevada counsel to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority with respect to the development of Allegiant Stadium and the new baseball stadium.
Michael Parks is a member of the Global Gaming Group, a strategic business unit within CBRE that focuses on providing investment banking and real estate advisory services to gaming companies worldwide. Parks has been involved in numerous gaming asset sales across the United States including the Rio All Suite Resort & Casino, Sahara Hotel Casino, Las Vegas Hilton, Flamingo Laughlin and the Trump Plaza. He has also been actively involved in representing both gaming and non-gaming companies in the acquisition and disposition of land parcels located in the Las Vegas resort corridor and throughout the United States.
Pearson is a managing director at Fortress Investment Group. He is currently the co-head of industrial real estate for both North America and Europe. Prior to Fortress, Pearson worked for CenterPoint as a principal in the West Coast office. He has extensive experience in the sector and has transacted across three continents. Prior to CenterPoint, Pearson worked as an investment officer for Exeter Property Group and as a senior associate for CBRE Capital Markets, where he was part of over $10 billion of industrial dispositions. He received an MBA from Columbia University and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. Outside of Fortress, Pearson serves as an advisory board member of Best Buddies Los Angeles and as an active part of Nick’s Kids, a charity focused on after school programs in inner city Los Angeles.
Randall Phelps is a practice leader in the industrial and data center sector serving as a civil engineer and project director. He applies his experience gained over the past three decades to every new and varied project with which he is involved. He is a strong leader with exceptional technical knowledge who provides creative solutions throughout the project lifecycle.
As co-founder and managing principal of GreenRock Capital, Chris Robbins is responsible for originating, advising, and structing accretive C-PACE financing solutions for CRE owners and developers. He actively contributes to the industry’s development through his leadership roles on several councils and boards. He is currently a member of the executive committee of the Northern California Real Estate and Development Council for the City of Hope and serves on the Redevelopment and Reuse Council of ULI Americas. Robbins earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Reon Roski serves as CEO of Majestic Realty, a position she was appointed to in May 2022. A board member since 1997, Roski joined the company in 2007 as senior counsel and was named managing director later that year. She is responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations and is instrumental in the continued growth of Majestic’s portfolio.
Eric Schmutz, NAIOP’s Senior Director of Federal Affairs, has nearly 30 years of experience working in Washington, D.C., in political campaigns as well as both the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. His work encompasses various aspects, including federal tax policy, environmental regulations, and financial services issues. Schmutz is a native Kansan, a graduate of Kansas State University, and holds an MBA from the University of Maryland. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife Betsy, daughter Eleanor, son Henry, and the family dog Otis.
Adam Showalter is the managing director of National Office Investor Services for Stream Realty Partners, overseeing the strategy and advancement of the firm’s national office leasing and management portfolio. In this role, he leads Stream’s strategic efforts in recruiting talent, identifying new business opportunities, and developing essential resources to achieve Stream’s growth initiatives. Showalter also serves on Stream’s recently launched Value Preservations Advisors team. He is one of the original members of Stream’s Ambassador Program, an elite organization focused on advancing the firm’s national office profile. Personifying the core values of Stream, the Ambassadors are essential to Stream’s national office platform, serving as exemplary leaders in their expertise, insights and collaboration efforts. Having joined Stream in September 2019, Showalter has been instrumental in the success and growth of our Chicago office. With assignments exceeding 30 million square feet, Showalter has positioned Stream as one of Chicago’s largest commercial real estate organizations.
As a principal at Cooper Carry, Steve Smith has been a leader in bringing national recognition to the design work of the firm. With offices in Atlanta, New York, and Washington, D.C., Smith and his partners have built a firm that understands the strong ties between architecture, landscape, urban planning and sustainability. Smith joined Cooper Carry in 1986 and has successfully completed many complex projects of various building types, particularly office, corporate, multifamily and mixed-use. He has led multimillion-dollar projects for developers and government clients. Smith remains tied into the everyday workings of these projects throughout each stage of design and construction. He is responsible for the production of complete, well-coordinated documents and management of the project as the primary contact of the owner’s representative. Smith received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame while also spending a year in the Notre Dame Rome Studies program in Italy. He is a member of DBIA, NAIOP, ULI and the AIA and is licensed in 23 states.
John Stewart specializes in the acquisition and disposition of institutional investment properties throughout Canada and has successfully represented many of the largest and most active public, private and institutional investors during his career. Prior to joining IPA, he held leadership positions with Colliers International Canada and with the Real Estate Investment Banking Group at BMO Capital Markets. Stewart is an active member of the NAIOP Greater Toronto chapter where he currently serves as chapter president. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Housing and Real Estate Management from the University of Guelph and a post-graduate certificate in Real Property Valuation from the University of British Columbia.
Jon Stock has worked on economic development incentives at Vorys for the past seven years. His practice includes a significant focus on data centers, for which he has assisted with incentives and infrastructure issues in multiple jurisdictions. Prior to joining Vorys, Stock served as chief legal counsel for the Ohio Development Services Agency. His experience includes having served as a partner in the trial practice group of a large national law firm and in a boutique firm specializing in litigation.
Aquiles Suarez is the Senior Vice President for Government Affairs for NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, where he oversees the association’s advocacy efforts at the federal, state, and local level, and manages the association’s political action committee, NAIOP-PAC. Aquiles joined NAIOP in 2007 as the head of its government affairs office. Prior to joining NAIOP, he held a number of positions in the executive and legislative branches of government, serving on the White House Domestic Policy Council, senior counsel on the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives, and at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Aquiles received his law degree from Columbia University Law School, and his undergraduate degree in government from Georgetown University.
As a recognized thought leader on sustainability and research-informed design, Premnath Sundharam drives innovation to advance technical design and practice while leveraging data to evaluate the impact of design on users and the environment. He guides the firm’s commitments to positively impact climate change and provides leadership for the energy services, high performance design, smart buildings, and sustainability teams. Sundharam has 20 years’ experience and has worked on over nine million square feet of sustainability and performance analysis spaces, including over a dozen net-zero projects. He has served on the board of USGBC Arizona Chapter and has been recognized as an emerging leader by the Design Futures Council in 2014. He is a Certified Energy Manager who has taught courses on net-zero energy design and simulation and was one of the first WELL accredited professionals in the nation. Sundharam played an instrumental leadership role in ensuring DLR Group was an early and notable signatory of the 2030 Commitment. As an architect with an engineering background, he is a passionate advocate for sustainability and the aims of Architecture 2030.
Randy Thompson brings decades of hands-on leadership experience to the position of vice president of national build-to-suit, a role in which he directs efforts to strategize, build, develop and strengthen relationships with national brokers and customers. He also supports team processes with developers across all regional offices, focusing on development and construction opportunities, pursuits and projects that make a difference in the life of communities.
Chuck Todd offers a comprehensive picture of the ever-changing political landscape. He’ll interpret the most pressing issues facing the country today and offer his insight and analysis into Washington politics and the current administration. A seasoned journalist and TV veteran, his unparalleled perspective on the media’s relationship with Washington and balanced scrutiny of politicians and current events delivers an entertaining and edifying experience you won’t soon forget.
Denice Tokunaga, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw, works with clients to capitalize on opportunities in commercial real estate, with a particular focus in the industrial space. She has a proven track record of facilitating growth for both domestic and international clients, including real estate developers, public and private companies, private equity, and pension funds, and works with clients to scale their real estate portfolios to support their growth across the U.S. and globally. Tokunaga is recognized for her strategic approach to complex cross-border leasing projects, build-to-suit, and acquisitions, and her commitment to reimagining traditional spaces for end-user benefits has established her as a leader in the field.
Rebecca Williams is managing director for Rockefeller Group Foreign Trade Zone Services, a division of Rockefeller Group Development Corporation and a part of Rockefeller Group. Rockefeller Group is a private corporation dedicated to excellence in commercial real estate development and services including foreign-trade zone (“FTZ”) feasibility, site selection, approval, activation, and operational support. For over 20 years, Williams has assisted companies with the implementation and integration of FTZ operations as well as general import/export compliance strategies. Williams and the Rockefeller Group FTZ team successfully lead multi-national clients across a broad range of industries through every aspect of FTZ implementation including detailed FTZ feasibility analysis, FTZ designation and production authority, activation preparation and approval, coordination with Partner Government Agencies (“PGAs”), detailed FTZ “go live” and operational support, and more.
Elissa Wilson is an economic development attorney at Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP. She has led incentives negotiations for projects with a combined projected capex of over $10.5 billion over the last three years. Her experience spans a range of industry sectors, including manufacturing megaprojects, hyperscale data centers, a sports stadium, retail developments, and other transformative development projects. Wilson earned her J.D. from Yale Law School.