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About

I am an award-winning digital & sustainable real estate strategist, public speaker, and futurist. I provide clients, partners, and the broader RE industry, with current market dynamics and near-future trends and vision, creating immense value opportunities and insights that drive near-term ROI. My unique purview combines, local, regional, national and global awareness and experience with emerging best practices in digital technology, innovation, sustainability, and energy efficiency. I tend to focus in the areas of e-commerce, omni-channel supply chain, mission critical, network optimization, and the near/long-term future-proofing of any industry which is being disrupted or transformed.

In addition to my duties at Op2mize, LLC, I am also the CEO of Op2mize Energy, a strategic energy procurement firm built on the premise of Sustainable Intelligence™. Previously I was Partner & SVP, Workplace Strategy at CRG, and an Executive Managing Director at Newmark Knight Frank where I led their national industrial practice group from 2013-2019. I also served as the 2016-17 Society of Industrial and Office Realtors® (SIOR) Global President. Currently I'm the Chicago Regional Chair for Foundation for International Blockchain and Real Estate Expertise (FIBREE), and a member of the Governing Board of Sky Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the research, awareness, and early detection of pancreatic cancer.

Over the course of my 30+ year career I've completed more than 1,000 transactions worth in excess of $1 billion. Notable clients include CAT, ASOS, Cummins, Petco, JB Hunt, Reyes Holdings, Assemblers/Skinny Pop, DWR/Herman Miller, Hussmann, Hydrofarm, Harlem Furniture, Gotham Greens, Heys Luggage, IDI, Prologis, and many others. I was listed by Crain’s Chicago Business as a member of their 2017 Most Influential Commercial Real Estate Brokers in Chicago list; was inducted as a member of the 2017 Midwest CRE Hall of Fame; was named a CoStar Power Broker in 2014, 2016, 2017 & 2018; and received NKF’s Outstanding Service Award for 2016, amongst other honors and distinctions.

In addition to my core real estate activities, I'm an innovation-minded business futurist focused on harnessing transformative disruption and technology convergence in order to bring actionable opportunities to commercial real estate. I've traveled the globe studying smart buildings and smart cities; provide mentoring to several PropTech startups; and sit on various advisory boards such as CRETech; Otso; InteliGlas; RealNex; BEI.re; and Rocket Wagon Venture Studio. I'm a prominent global Keynote speaker and accomplished author on a variety of topics including economic trends, innovation, sustainability, e-commerce/supply chain, blockchain, and exponential and converging technologies. Some of my recent Keynote speaking assignments have included various SIOR regional events; Milwaukee Biz Times; CCIM Symposium; NAR NXT; ULI Minnesota; SIOR Upstate NY Chapter; CARW; GlobeSt National Industrial Conference; University of San Diego Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate's 23rd Annual Real Estate Conference; the State Bar of Michigan; National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board; Counselors of Real Estate (CRE); NCREIF; NAIOP; the Appraisal Institute; BISNOW’s National Industrial Conference; the Will County (IL) Center for Economic Development; Ware Malcomb and Ashley Capital’s Annual Company Meetings; and Knight Frank’s Global Cities launch event in Dublin, Ireland. Other recent speaking assignments have taken me to Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, the U.K.