Real Perspectives Podcast

Dafna Kaplan is the founding CEO of Cassette, a Los Angeles-based fully-integrated modular system provider. As a veteran of both consumer tech and construction industries, she observed the need for a tech-driven innovator committed to working through and with the people that make buildings happen.

Cassette sells its own systems within a wrap-around service model, and also offers these services independently of its own systems, for the benefit of the larger industry.

Today, we have an opportunity to sit down with Julie Faupel, the founder and CEO of REALM, a proprietary and patented platform made to bring real change in the way luxury real estate is transacted. REALM connects real estate professionals and their clientele to properties that fit their personalized needs and lifestyles, creating a bespoke experience that will take the guesswork out of the equation.

Julie does runs this organization, along with her own real estate business, from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she is a recognized member of the real estate and business community.

Lisa Novak is the Head of HR and Talent at Austin-based data.world, a company focused on making it easy for everyone—not just the "data people"—to get clear, accurate, fast answers to any business question. Their cloud-native data catalog maps your siloed, distributed data to familiar and consistent business concepts, creating a unified body of knowledge anyone can find, understand, and use.

Lisa is tasked with helping the company grow and hire the right people to ensure it is successful today and also well into the future. Her challenges during a global pandemic are not unique, but her ability to help successfully navigate these hurdles is commendable, and the achievements of her efforts are on full display.

Julie Satterwhite

Chief Marketing Officer - PAE Engineers

As PAE’s Chief Marketing Officer, Julie is passionate about bringing clients the message of PAE’s caring and conscientious people who seek to help solve the world’s energy and water challenges through high performing building design. Julie helps to strengthen relationships with clients and industry partners while working with principals and project managers to help them achieve their business development goals. With over two decades of experience, she leads with emotional intelligence and acts as a catalyst for her team to do the same. Julie spearheads the Women in Leadership committee at PAE, which seeks to create pathways toward leadership for the women of the firm.

Today, we sit down with Matt Slepin, the founder of Terra Search Partners, a Bay Area-based executive search firm that specializes in the real estate industry. Matt is an old friend of ours and has collaborated with The Registry over the years. 

Matt founded his firm around the concept that retained executive search has the power to help clients beyond the job placement. The Terra Search approach is to use search as a journey through which Matt’s firm and his clients are able to look deeply at the structure of a client’s organization, its place in the competitive landscape, and how strategic hiring can improve their business well into the future.

Matt is passionate about real estate and its role in our economy. Since 2017, Matt has been the host of the podcast series, “Leading Voices in Real Estate,” where he has had conversations with leaders from throughout the real estate industry about their career journeys and the businesses that they run. The series offers insights into pathways to success and the difference that the real estate industry can make in the way that we live, work and play.

Today, we sit down with Wendi Baker and Don Capobres of Harmonie Park, a Bay Area-based development company focused on creating thriving mixed-use communities. Don and Wendi started Harmonie after collaborating for years on Grosvenor’s North 40 development in Los Gatos, California. Don, then an executive with Grosvenor, and Wendi, who worked for SummerHill Homes, decided to take the plunge and form Harmonie, which today continues with their effort in Los Gatos and elsewhere across the region. 

Don Capobres

Principal and CEO

Don has over 25 years of real estate development experience in both the private and public sectors, a rare combination that offers valuable insight and experience when collaborating with municipalities. Over the years, he has held responsibilities, as diverse as representing the U.S. real estate development interests of Grosvenor, an international property group, and managing projects for the City of San Francisco.

Wendi Baker

Principal and COO

In her two decades of experience in the San Francisco Bay Area real estate and planning industry, Wendi has overseen the development of multiple communities. Her expertise ranges from acquisition to sales for complex projects throughout Silicon Valley.

Phillip Raub is the chief executive officer of Oakland-based Model No., an innovative furniture design and manufacturing enterprise that is looking to turn this centuries-old business on its head with a 3-D printing business model. Bringing experiences as co-founder of the technology retailer b8ta and a leader at Nest, Toys “R” Us and Nintendo, to name a few, Phillip and his team are looking at innovation as a core tenet of the firm’s work. Something the retail industry needs today more than ever.

David Greensfelder is a managing principal at Greensfelder Real Estate Strategy and a founding advisor at a retail development e-commerce enterprise called TruLocal.

David works nationally with companies in providing strategic planning, market analytics and location intelligence, and real estate development services to occupiers, communities, financial institutions and investors nationally. Always focused on practical solutions and implementation, David pioneered the Retail Resilience, a quadruple bottom-line discipline for creating lasting retail vitality, and dynamic, flexible, and adaptable retail strategies and recommendations for communities, owners, and retailers.

We sit down with David to get a perspective on the industry and how the current environment will shape the real estate world in the years to come.

David Gull is the founder and chief executive officer at Outer Realm, a virtual realty startup whose mission is to help real estate companies fully sell and lease their projects before they are built.

David is an industry veteran who started in the business as an architect and worked with one of the world’s most renowned architecture firms, Skidmore Owings and Merrill. Following his love for innovation, he left SOM to join Floored, which was subsequently acquired by CBRE. But the corporate setting had a limited shelf-life for David, who then struck out on his own to launch Outer Realm and transform the vision of so many developers through a virtual world. 

Julie Treppa is a partner in San Francisco-based Farella Braun + Martel. She is a versatile, highly experienced practitioner with expertise in a broad range of tax-related issues and controversies involving federal, state and other taxing authorities. Julie is particularly experienced in developing strategies to help investors, developers, businesses and non-profit organizations use tax incentives and tax credits to achieve their financial goals. Two areas in which she has special expertise are New Markets Tax Credits and Opportunity Zones, both of which are designed to induce investments in specified low-income communities.

We sit down with Julie to talk about Opportunity Zones, how they evolved and what the new normal means for this very important investment asset class.