Suzanne is the Chair of the Bilzin Sumberg’s real estate group.  She advises developers and owners across every stage of their investments, and also works with alternative finance lenders and CMBS special servicers. She is very active in the areas of marina acquisition and development – Ms. Amaducci-Adams and her team have closed over $2 billion in marina transactions. She is also active in hotel acquisition, finance, and mixed-use development, leading the Firm’s hospitality group. Ms. Amaducci-Adams has worked out several billion dollars of loan secured by hospitality and other assets classes. 

Susan J. Booth is a partner at Holland & Knight LLP, where she spent more than a decade as the head of the firm’s West Coast Real Estate Group and also served on the firm's Director's Committee. She is a Los Angeles-based real estate attorney with a national practice focused primarily on purchase, sale and capital market transactions involving data centers, hotels, office buildings, multi-family developments, shopping centers, industrial parks, senior-living centers and mixed-use projects. Ms. Booth also has almost two decades of experience representing clients in the acquisition and financing (as both lender and borrower) of data centers. Her clients include domestic and international commercial banks, pension funds, private equity funds, debt funds, REITs and family offices and has closed billions of dollars in transactions over each of the past several years. Ms. Booth’s extensive capital markets experience includes both CMBS and portfolio loans (acquisition, development, construction, revolving, bridge, term, permanent, mezzanine, EB-5 and Sharia compliant), syndication and participation arrangements, joint venture agreements and mortgage loan portfolio sales/acquisitions. 

Melanie Cyganowski practices in insolvency and bankruptcy litigation, and is also an active mediator, having mediated cases in bankruptcy and federal cases throughout the country. Ms. Cyganowski represents debtors, creditors’ committees and has also been appointed to various fiduciary positions in several large and complex bankruptcy cases. Ms. Cyganowski has developed particular expertise in contract interpretation and enforcement, breach of fiduciary duty, examination of transactions, fraudulent conveyance and the pursuit of claims in bankruptcy. Ms. Cyganowski became a Member of the Firm in 2008, after serving a full 14-year term as a Bankruptcy Judge in the Eastern District of New York, including a term as Chief Judge of the Court from November 29, 2005, through the end of her term.

Dominic J. De Simone is the Co-Chair of Ballard Spahr's national Finance Department, and Team Leader of the firm's Private Equity Real Estate, Commercial Loan Servicing, and Distressed Real Estate teams. He focuses his practice on real estate finance, transaction structuring and restructuring, and distressed real estate matters on behalf of lenders, special servicers, investors, and borrowers. Mr. De Simone also has extensive experience representing real estate purchasers and sellers, developers, landlords and tenants, and court-appointed receivers. He is particularly known for his work with balance-sheet and CMBS loan originations, construction loan transactions, intercreditor matters, loan and investment structuring and restructurings, and workout and enforcement matters, all involving such varied project types as retail, office, industrial, multifamily, student housing, hotel, residential and commercial condominiums including broken condominiums, single-family tract development, assisted-living facilities, gaming, and mixed-use developments. He has advised on a wide variety of single- and multi-lender financing structures, including acquisition, construction, revolving, leasehold mortgage, CMBS, and mezzanine loan transactions; subscription facilities; A/B loan splits; loan participations; note financings; New Markets Tax Credit transactions; sale-leaseback transactions; and bond financing transactions.

Pete Ezell's practice is focused on commercial real estate acquisitions, development and finance, tax-exempt bond financing and economic development transactions. In addition, he has devoted a substantial amount of time to the advancement of legal opinion practice in real estate transactions. Mr. Ezell is the past chair of the Committee on Legal Opinions in Real Estate Transactions; RPTE Section of the ABA and of the Attorney's Opinions Committee of ACREL. He is also the Chair of the Joint Committee on Legal Opinions, Tennessee Bar Association. Additionally, he is a past vice president and board member of the Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation.

Manuel Farach is a shareholder in the West Palm Beach office of Mrachek Law where he represents clients with complex real estate, business and appellate issues. Mr. Farach is board-certified by The Florida Bar in real estate law, business litigation and appellate law, and co-chair of the RPTL Section’s Real Property Litigation Committee. He is past chair of the Florida Supreme Court Committee on standard jury instructions for contract cases, the ABA’s Real Property Litigation Group, and the Real Property Section’s Certification Review Seminar, and chair-elect of the Business Law Section of The Florida Bar. He is a former member of the Bar’s Appellate Certification Examination Committee. He is an elected member of ALI, the Board of Governors of ACREL, and the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors. He serves as Adjunct Professor of Real Estate Law at the Florida State University College of Law and is the author of West’s Florida Real Estate Law and the Case Law Update, a weekly summary of both Florida and federal real estate and business cases.

Manuel A. (“Manny”) Fernandez is a partner in Alvarez & Diaz Silveira LLP’s Real Estate Transactions group. Mr. Fernandez represents institutional and non-institutional investors and developers in a wide array of real estate matters, including real estate acquisitions and dispositions, commercial leasing matters, distressed real estate transactions, real estate financings, and the formation of real estate joint ventures. He has extensive experience representing both borrowers and lenders in commercial mortgage loan financings, including construction loans and mezzanine loans, and is recognized as one of the leading attorneys in the closing of CMBS mortgage financings.  Mr. Fernandez has been honored as a “Top Latino Lawyer” by Latino Lawyers Magazine for his instrumental role in closing some of the largest real estate transactions in Florida and throughout the U.S, as well as his leadership in the Latino Community.

Alexis B. Ford Kernot is Senior Director, Corporate Counsel at Digital Realty, a publicly traded real estate investment trust that is the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. Ms. Ford has been with Digital Realty for eight years in the San Francisco, CA office, advising asset management, operations and investments teams on all types of data center real estate matters, including leasing, purchase and sale, development and construction, financing, joint venture, land use, energy procurement, condemnation, and environmental matters. She has negotiated complex data center lease and services contract (single racks to multiple MW hyperscale deployments), including multi-site and global agreements. She has managed transactions in data center hotspots, such as Ashburn, Virginia, and in global jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong. Before joining Digital Realty, Ms. Ford worked as in house counsel for an industrial property company and as a real estate associate in the San Francisco offices of Allen Matkins and Paul Hastings.

Teresa Goebel is a partner at Goodwin Procter LLP, which she joined in 2008. Ms. Goebel represents many of the world's leading hotel companies. She focuses particularly on the acquisition, development, financing, management and sale of hotels, resorts and branded residential properties. She regularly negotiates, structures and documents management agreements and equity and debt investments for hotels, resorts and other mixed use hospitality projects throughout the Americas, in locations ranging from New York City to San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro. Ms. Goebel is co-chair of Goodwin's Pro Bono Committee and a former member of the Partnership Committee. Teresa currently serves on the board of City Hope, a non-profit providing services to residents of the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. She was a clerk for Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

John Jugl is Vice Chairman and serves as a regional lead for Newmark Knight Frank’s Denver institutional investment sales platform. With over 19 years of experience in the commercial real estate and finance industry, John is an integral part of the firm’s Western Region Capital Market Group and leads a team focused on the disposition, acquisition and equity financing of investment properties on behalf of institutional clients throughout the western United States. Mr. Mr. Jugl lives in Boulder with his wife Robin, daughter Natasha and their Weimaraner. He is a member of Lincoln Hills Fly Fishing Club and Catamount Ranch and Golf Club and a Board Member for River Deep Foundation and Anglers of Honor which provides rehabilitation outings for veterans and civilians who have experience life-changing circumstances.

Cheryl represents lenders and obligors in complex finance transactions, loan restructurings, and bankruptcy, receivership, foreclosure and other proceedings involving creditor-debtor relations. She additionally represents sellers and buyers in asset transfers (including sales and purchases of loans and real estate) and handles a variety of other commercial law matters. Ms. Kelly is a Fellow of ACMA.

Adrianne Kroepsch is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines.  Her research centers around how environmental problems are defined, and solutions are enacted with a primary emphasis on water politics in the American West.   She currently has active projects on groundwater pumping, surface water management, and atmospheric intervention (i.e., cloud seeding).   She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies and a Masters in Geography, both from the University of Colorado-Boulder.  Her research has been published in Geoforum, Water Alternatives, Energy Policy, Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Science & Technology, Society & Natural Resources, The Extractive Industries & Society, Environmental Communication, and Case Studies in the Environment. Prior to joining the faculty at the School of Mines, she worked as a journalist covering science and technology policy.

Daniel Marre's practice focuses on real estate transactions and development, with an emphasis on the hotel industry.  He has significant experience with transactions affecting commercial property, including acquisitions, dispositions, construction, development, financing and leasing.  Within the hotel industry, Mr. Marre has been involved in a number of high-profile hotel transactions, including the acquisition and financing of the Essex House Hotel on Central Park South in New York City, the acquisition of a joint-venture interest in The Hotel del Coronado and refinancing of the hotel, and the acquisition and financing of The Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, an art deco icon.  His hotel clients range from small boutiques to some of the world’s largest hotel companies.  Mr. Marre guides them through the complexities of hotel projects and the distinct legal challenges of owning and operating a hotel. With client relationships spanning more than a decade, including long-term counsel to such companies as Integrated Capital, Geller Capital Partners, and Spertus Institute, he uses his understanding of clients’ competitive and market pressures to serve in a valued advisory role when needed.   In addition to being an avid musician, Mr. Marre is active within the Chicago arts community and is a longtime regular at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music.  He is also a member of the board for Lawyers for the Creative Arts (LCA), an organization that provides free legal service to financially eligible clients in the arts.

Marisa McGaughey is Vice President and Senior Associate Counsel at Capital One Bank.  She leads the legal team for all commercial lending for Capital One’s Commercial Bank.  She manages a team of 16 commercial bank legal associates that provide direct legal support to 10+ lines of business.  Ms. McGaughey is also a member of both the commercial bank legal leadership team and the Commercial Bank business leadership teams.  She helps drive the Commercial Bank Legal objectives through thought leadership and people management.  Among other things, she provides legal guidance on product strategy, lending objectives, LIBOR transition planning, bank regulatory concerns, ESG initiatives, fair access considerations, deal structuring, real estate matters, and general business concerns.  Ms. McGaughey also provides ongoing direct support for the commercial real estate platform which includes negotiation guidance, business team support (including originations, underwriting, credit and asset management), consistent interaction with external counsel, guidance on platform level directives.  She has extensive experience handling the legal work on large portfolios of CMBS loans, portfolio commercial real estate loans and a wide variety of other lending products. 

Judy Miles is Executive Vice President, General Counsel of KHP Capital Partners, L.P., a real estate private equity firm focused on investments in lifestyle and independent hotels.  Ms. Miles is responsible for the overall legal function of KHP Capital Partners and its investment funds, including investments, financings, dispositions, operational matters, risk management, intellectual property, and corporate administration. She joined KHP Capital Partners in January 2015, following six years as Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary for Kimpton Hotels.  Before her time at Kimpton, Ms. Miles spent 24 years in private practice as a commercial real estate/hospitality lawyer, advising hotel owners, operators, and lenders in a wide range of matters, including the development, management, acquisition, financing, and sale of hotels, resorts, fractional ownership properties, and branded residential properties.  She also has substantial experience in the structuring and negotiation of creative debt and equity financing transactions, and the workout and restructuring of problematic investments.  Ms. Miles also serves on the Board of Governors for ACREL.

Marc Painter is a real estate partner in the Denver and Boulder offices of Holland & Hart, and the past chair of the firm’s real estate group. His practice focuses on real estate planning, entitlements and development, as well as acquisition, finance and leasing, with an emphasis on development of research and technology campuses. He is a Fellow of ACMA, former chair of the Board of Colorado Bar Association CLE and a past chair of the CBA Real Estate Section Council. He has been a speaker and an author on a variety of real estate topics, including articles for ACREL, ACMA, the National Consumer Bankers’ Association, with articles in the Colorado Real Estate Journal, the Colorado Lawyer, the ACREL Papers and the ABA Real Property, Probate & Trust Journal, among others. He is a regular faculty speaker at the annual Colorado Real Estate Symposium and other continuing education and industry programs, where he has lectured on a wide range of topics including: climate change, the Corporate Transparency Act, the Economic Loss Rule in real estate transactions, planning and development, marijuana and banking, the Clean Air Act’s impact on real estate development, sustainability issues in mixed use development, HUD financing and multifamily development, real estate issues for nonprofit entities and liquor licensing issues in retail leasing.

Thomas H. Painter, PhD is the Founder/CEO of the NASA technology transfer and public benefit corporation Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc. and a Project Scientist at the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. His areas of interest are snow hydrology, water resources applications from mountain snow and ice, radiative impacts of light-absorbing impurities on snow and glacier melt, and multi-sensor remote sensing of snow properties.  He was the Principal Investigator of the NASA/JPL Airborne Snow Observatory, an integrated imaging spectrometer and LiDAR system to give the first-ever comprehensive, near real-time maps of snow water equivalent and snow reflectivity in mountain basins.  He is also a Co-Investigator on the NASA Earth Venture Instrument EMIT, an imaging spectrometer flying on the International Space Station to explore the mineralogy of and radiative forcing by desert dust. Dr. Painter’s efforts resulted in the development of the NASA Western Water Applications Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the establishment of the Surface Biology and Geology spaceborne imaging spectrometer measurement concept in the 2017 National Academies Earth Science Decadal Survey. Dr. Painter is past president of the Cryosphere Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union.  In 2018, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal and the Bureau of Reclamation’s John W. Keys III Award.  In 2019, he was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Scott Peterson is the Founder and CEO of Global Compute Infrastructure, a joint venture with Goldman Sachs’ Asset Management.  Global Compute is focused on investments in global data infrastructure and led by a team of international industry veterans with an unmatched investment track record.  Global Compute acquires, develops and operates data infrastructure assets across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America and most recently acquired Atman, the leading data center provider in Poland. Mr. Peterson co-founded Digital Realty Trust in 2004. As Chief Investment Officer, Mr. Peterson was primarily responsible for all M&A activities and evaluating capital allocation decisions. As chair of the Investment Committee, he was responsible for overseeing all major development and leasing decisions and spent significant time managing international operations and asset management for the company. Under his leadership, Digital Realty became the largest global data center company in the world, growing to the eighth largest publicly traded REIT, with an enterprise value in excess of $35 billion, and was added to the S&P 500 in 2016.

Eric is the Director of Property, Risk Control for IMA Financial. Prior to joining IMA, Mr. Riddleberger spent 18 years working for FM Global in their Risk Engineering department.  Within those 18 years, he was able to gain valuable experience in commercial insurance evaluating property risk from an engineering perspective. Industries that he has extensive experience with include: manufacturing (plastic, ceramics, woodworking, heavy manufacturing (molten materials, glass plants, steel mills, foundries, etc.), pharmaceutical industries, warehousing (public and private), data centers, soft occupancies (luxury high rise offices / buildings, universities, R&D, apartments, etc.), and many other industries.

As a property specialist he further developed his skills by becoming a windstorm specialist, flood specialist for natural hazard perils as well as a molten materials specialist for high hazard occupancies. He was looked at as a leader within his operations by mentoring several incoming engineers as well as experienced engineers in the high hazard classifications. He has evaluated over 10,000 locations throughout his tenure within Risk Engineering at FM Global and Director of Property at IMA.

Daniel Rubock is Senior Vice President with the commercial real estate finance group at Moody’s Investors Service, helping Moody’s develop its policy for structural and legal issues in CMBS.  Prior to joining Moody’s in 1999, Mr. Rubock practiced law with Cadwallader Wickersham & Taft, Dechert Price & Rhoads and White & Case, concentrating on commercial real estate law and real estate litigation.  He is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School. He is also a Certified Mortgage Banker.

Brent C. Shaffer is a partner in the Delaware firm of Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP. His practice is concentrated in the area of commercial transactional real estate, including representing lenders and borrowers in commercial real estate loan originations, workouts and restructurings; nonprofits and lenders in affordable housing transactions; commercial real estate buyers and sellers; and landlords and tenants in commercial leases. He has served clients in Maryland since 1987 and in Delaware since 1995 and is an active member of both the Delaware and Maryland bars. Mr. Shaffer is a Fellow of ACMA and is currently the vice chair of the ACREL Publications Committee. He edited The Sublease and Assignment Deskbook, the second edition of which was published in 2013, and has also written articles published in Probate & Property, The Practical Real Estate Lawyer, and Delaware Banker.

GinaMarie K. Spencer is a partner at the firm of Mendelsohn Oseran & Spencer, PLC in Tucson, Arizona. She is an active member of the State Bars of Arizona and Michigan, and a certified real estate specialist by the Arizona Bar. Ms. Spencer practices in all aspects of real estate transactions for private developers in the areas of residential, retail, medical, office and industrial; and for tenants in the areas of life science and restaurants. She is a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent rated attorney, a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLI, and a member of the Board of Directors of Intermountain Centers for Human Development.

Sara T. Wagner is chair of the real estate group of Richards, Layton & Finger, Delaware's largest law firm. She focuses her practice on complex transactions involving the finance, acquisition, sale, lease, and development of commercial real estate properties, with a particular emphasis on closing sophisticated commercial real estate loans. Ms. Wagner represents major real estate developers, financial institutions, significant holders of commercial real estate, and institutional clients, advising them on a wide array of commercial real estate matters. She is a contributing author of several published articles and a frequent speaker on Delaware real estate law. She is a fellow of ACMA and the American Bar Foundation.

Sterling Scott Willis is a partner in the Louisiana firm of Fishman Haygood, L.L.P.  He practices primarily in the areas of commercial transactions, negotiated acquisitions, banking and commercial real estate acquisitions, development, and financing. Mr. Willis is previously served on ACREL’s Board of Governors, is a member of ACMA, and a past chair of the Louisiana Banker’s Association’s Bank Counsel Committee.  He is the current co-chair of the ACMA Opinions Committee, past chair of the ABA’s RPTE Committee on Legal Opinions, past Chair of the ACREL Attorney’s Opinions Committee, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation. Mr. Willis is a past co-chair of the ABA RPTE Section standing CLE Committee and served as a Supervisory Council Member to the Section.  He is also past chair of the New Orleans Bureau of Governmental Research.