John Jay Schwartz, MCR, RPA, IBC; CEO; Man with Square Feet, Henrico, Virginia, USA
John Jay Schwartz, MCR, RPA, IBC, the Man with Square Feet® is a savvy businessman and commercial Real Estate Broker and Consultant who makes decisions and completes projects that support revenue growth whether it is Bricks, Sticks and/or Dirt ! He resolves real estate issues for owners, occupants and other real estate holders small and large. John Jay’s unique talents include over 4 decades & nearly 50 million square feet of performance of strong relationship-building, negotiation, entitlement skills and just pure deal making for the benefit of his clients. He managed up to 60 projects concurrently. He is skilled in local, regional & national rollouts; experienced in Tier I, II and III markets; and knowledgeable in all areas of commercial real estate support, advisory and execution.
At a time when many companies face intense scrutiny by the public, stockholder, government entities, financial institutions; CEOs and CFOs & senior management, Trustees, etc needs to watch their bottom line; and/or families or other ownership types protecting their financial interests; they all have turned to John Jay for answers and solutions. John Jay is a strategic thinker and hands on manager who consistently delivers results.
His VCU Accounting Bachelor of Science Degree and International Business Certificate helps him standout, understand and support ownership whether individuals, trusts, small or large ownership entities, public or private businesses in all their real estate matters. John Jay is a member of the following industry trade groups: CoreNet Global, IAMC, ICSC, BOMA, GRACRE, Metro Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Greater Richmond Partnership
John Jay is proud and humbled to join the VCU Real Estate Circle of Excellence, RECE!
Site Selector Speakers
Jon Clark is an Albuquerque native and is deputy cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Economic
Development Department.
Before joining the department in 2019, Mr. Clark worked as a fiscal analyst and then chief economist for the Legislative Finance Committee for seven years, where he specialized in tax policy, revenue forecasting, and economic development analysis.
Mr. Clark also worked with the New Mexico Partnership to recruit new jobs and businesses to the state, and before that he worked with scientists at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories to help commercialize technologies developed at the labs.
He has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and a Master’s in Business
Administration from the Anderson School of Management at UNM.
David Gaines, Managing Director, Goldstone Consulting Group, Moberly, Missouri, USA
David Gaines, Managing Director, leads the day-to-day operations of the firm’s consulting business and the firm’s commercial and industrial real estate division, Goldstone Realty Partners.
Goldstone Consulting Group provides site selection service to companies that are expanding and
searching for new locations to establish operations. Goldstone Consulting Group also provides
economic development consulting services to communities.
Prior to founding Goldstone Consulting Group in 2016, Mr. Gaines held leadership roles in two
local and regional economic development agencies dating back to 2007. During that time, he was
responsible for the business attraction efforts for the communities he represented as well
business retention and expansion programs for those communities.
David is a founding member of the Northeast Missouri Development Partnership, a 14-county
regional economic development agency. He also served as the group’s first two-term Chairman
of the Board of Directors and currently serves as a member of its Government Relations Committee.
He holds a degree in Business Administration from the Ashford University – Forbes School of
Business and a Chancellor’s Certificate in International Trade from the University of Missouri-St.
Louis. He is also a graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Economic Development Institute.
During his 30-years of business experience, David has held positions from sales and marketing to
management and ownership. He has worked in the economic development, financial services,
print and broadcast media, real estate and business services industries.
David has authored numerous articles for national publications on matters relating to economic
development and business and is a former financial talk show host for a major market radio
station. In addition, he has also been a panelist and a moderator many times on topics
concerning economic development.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Mr. John Clark, Deputy Cabinet Secretary; New Mexico Economic Development Department
Roswell, New Mexico, UNITED STATES
SEPTEMBER 27-29, 2023
Barry Albrecht, CEO, Strategic Locations Services, Lawton, NM USA
Barry Albrecht has served in economic development for over 28 years and has developed a reputation as an entrepreneur and industry leader in economic development and corporate real estate development, specializing in complex incentive design and transactions with national and international industries. As an economic development executive, he has directly been involved in the recruitment, relocating and expansion numerous tech-based industries and federal agencies which accounted for thousands of new high-tech and government related jobs. He previously has served as CEO of with multiple Texas, Arizona and Oklahoma based regional economic development corporations that also served large military and federal installations. He also worked 12 years with Hughes Aircraft as a business development executive and served 6 years in the Army as an aviator.
In 2019, Barry founded Strategic Locations Services LLC (SLS). SLS is a veteran owned full service
economic development and corporate location advisory firm specializing in economic development
consulting to communities and the defense industry.
SLS advisory services include site selection, expansions, facility searches, relocations, incentive
negotiations that specializes in the defense industry in finding the optimum place to support existing or future contract awards.
Since 2019, SLS has completed 16 site selection projects with the defense and cyber security industry and has provided economic development services to dozens communities.
He continues to speak at national and state conferences on regional economic development and
community marketing strategies. He has served on numerous national committees and has acted as congressional support to communities and local industries.
Paige Webster, President/Site Selection Consultant, Webster Global Site Selectors, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Paige Webster started his firm in 2013. Paige has worked with many projects across many industry sectors including: aerospace, bio tech, geo-thermal, wind & solar, warehouse/distribution, office projects, data centers, corporate centers and the retail sector. Paige has been working in site selection and economic development for twenty years.
Paige has had extensive site selection experience as he was the Western Regional Real Estate Manager for Aaron Rents. Paige was able to facilitate and expand the major retail expansion for Aaron Rents in the Western United States.
Paige has had experience in the Economic Development arena too. He was the former Economic Development Director for the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation. Paige’s experience includes working with back office, warehouse distribution, bio-tech, software development companies and food processing companies for the Yuma area. Paige did extensive work in cross border economic development and was a member of the Border Trade Alliance (BTA) and worked closely with the Arizona Governor’s Office on cross border issues in Mexico. Paige was on the Workforce Development Board and was also a Board Member of the Arizona Association of Economic Development (AAED). Paige has also received the CEcD designation during his career in Economic Development.
Paige also worked for the Arizona Department of Commerce as the Northern Arizona Representative, assisting companies to expand or relocate to the State of Arizona with projects related to injection molding, warehouse/distribution, back office, agro-business, bio-tech, high tech, aviation.
Paige has received his BS in Regional Development from University of Arizona and has also received his MBA in Global Management from the University of Phoenix. Paige resides in Phoenix, AZ and loves to fly fish, play golf, hunt and scuba dive.
Sabrina Champagne, President of State Tax Credits, OnCentive, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Sabrina Champagne is the president of state tax credits for OnCentive, part of the HR Logics suite of solutions.
HR Logics was established with a clear mission: to offer employers safe and trustworthy compliance
technologies and customer-first partnership centered on client outcomes. Determined to bring back partnership, guidance, and the human aspect of customer care to the compliance industry, we
differentiate ourselves from the competition in one crucial aspect: our singular focus on our client
outcomes. The result? Reliable, comprehensive, and flexible compliant solutions that place clients at
the forefront.
Sabrina has spent the past two decades engaged in various aspects of tax credit consulting. Some
of her accomplishments include providing federal and state tax credit advice to many leading
Fortune 500 companies yielding millions of dollars in annual savings. She has facilitated numerous
negotiated incentive packages to offset costs associated with corporate expansion and training
activities. She has also worked with the Ministry in Canada to implement the Targeted Wage
Subsidy program for a large US retail corporation. She uses a consultative approach when forming
partnerships with clients to capture both negotiated and statutory credits to reduce their effective tax rates.
In her spare time, she can be found volunteering at various community events throughout
Indianapolis and surrounding areas. She finally hung up her skates after playing ice hockey for many years, and now spends hours in her organic garden.
Amy Gerber, Executive Managing Director Business Incentives
Practice, Cushman & Wakefield, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Professional Expertise
Amy Gerber brings 25 years of industry experience and is an Executive Managing Director in our
Business Incentives Practice at Cushman & Wakefield. The practice helps companies mitigate risk
in site selection through negotiations with state and local governments and other entities to address both upfront and operating costs differentials as well as timing hurdles.
Amy specializes in location analytics and understanding the financial impacts on a company when
operating in a market. Ms. Gerber utilizes her state and local tax background when evaluating
market costs and tax structures as well as in working with economic development teams to evaluate and understand tax and incentive legislation and statutes. In many instances, Ms. Gerber, has even modified existing legislation generating significant savings for her clients. Amy has led and managed numerous multi-state incentive negotiation engagements for both office and industrial projects across the country for a wide range of companies including Fortune 10 companies to start-up companies.
Amy came to Cushman & Wakefield from Jones Lang LaSalle where she was part of the Business
and Economic Incentives practice for 16 years. Prior to joining Jones Lang LaSalle, Ms. Gerber
worked at KPMG, LLP with the State and Local Tax Practice/Strategic Relocation and Expansion
Services Division.
Clients Served
• Agile Cold Storage
• Castlight Health
• Herbalife
• Domino’s Pizza
• FreezPak Logistics
• Owens Corning
• Lineage Logistics
• Advantest
• Materne
• Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits
• ABB
Education and Professional Affiliations
Amy Gerber holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Montana State University. Amy
is a Board member with the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and was a member of Leadership
Georgia class of 2016. Amy is also a member of the Georgia Association of Manufacturers and is on
the editorial advisory board for Area Development Magazine.
Mike Grella, President, Grella Partnership Strategies, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Mike Grella, Founder of Grella Partnership Strategies (GPS), and Chief Infrastructure Officer to Active Infrastructure, brings over 28 years of experience in economic development, workforce development, corporate site selection, community engagement & planning, lobbying and public policy.
Mike’s approach to economic development transactions and industrial real estate development is rooted in mutually beneficial public-private partnerships that engage community stakeholders throughout the entire project lifecycle from due diligence, site selection and entitlement, construction, and operations.
Prior to founding GPS, Mike created from the ground up and led Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Economic Development teams, facilitating investments representing many billion dollars of capital investment and hundreds of thousands new jobs in 30 states and 15 countries.
Mike supported the launch and expansion of Amazon data center regions around the world and continues to support hyperscale data center development for several large tenants and developers. He also served as Legal Director and Director of Infrastructure for AWS.
Prior to joining Amazon, Mike advised dozens of Fortune 500 and large privately held companies on site selection and economic development matters.
GPS advises communities, economic development organizations, chambers of commerce, utilities on best practices, strategies to attract digital infrastructure/data center/advanced manufacturing projects, conducts market analyses, high and best use assessments for property portfolios, and also consults on DEI/ESG strategy to create more inclusive, equitable, and resilient prosperity in communities.
Mike received his degree in Accounting from Villanova University, his Juris Doctor from Hofstra University School of Law, and is a member of the New York State Bar.
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