Levi Benkert is a proven innovative business leader with 20 years of experience in strategic real estate related business development. Levi has leveraged his skills to identify unique opportunities, maximize growth, raise capital and create sustainable vision for companies that he has founded and led. Levi has bought, managed and developed over $400M in real estate properties in his career. Levi is great at building teams who are aligned around clear objectives and a shared passion for building a better world. When not doing due diligence on another industrial property Levi can be found on a paddle board in Lady Bird Lake in Austin with his wife and their 4 kids.
Levi can be found on Twitter talking about real estate @Levijameshere.
Aaron has over five years of experience in the accounting industry and serves as Harbor Capital's Director of Accounting. He has a CPA license and a Master of Accounting degree from Ohio Northern University. He is also certified in business valuation and fraud examination. Before joining the team, Aaron gained experience working in public accounting, banking, and real estate. Shortly after passing the CPA exams, he relocated to Austin from Ohio and quickly adjusted to the ATX heat! When he's not focused on producing accurate financial records for Harbor Capital, he spends his time with his dog, Blaze, and traveling to different cities across the country.
Ben graduated from Boston College in 2021 with concentrations in finance and analytics. He previously interned with Spirits Investment Partners, a private equity group focused on acquiring and accelerating the growth of early-stage whiskey brands. Ben is primarily responsible for sourcing and analyzing new investment opportunities, staying current with market dynamics, and managing Harbor Capital's pipeline of new deals from contract to close.
Morgan worked up and down the east coast in roles in Project Management and Institutional Fixed Income Sales prior to relocating to Texas. At Harbor Capital, she is able to use her unique skill set to work hand in hand with investors in Investor Relations. Morgan earned her B.S. from Saint Joseph's University in Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Sustainability.
Liam had four years of real estate experience in Commercial Property Management and Multifamily Technology Sales in the Kansas City metro area before relocating to Austin. At Harbor Capital, he is able to use his prior experiences in real estate for his role in asset management. Liam graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with an emphasis in Economics. In his free time, Liam likes to spend time with his family and read about his favorite sports teams.
Miranda graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with her B.F.A. in Art Education and Paralegal Certification in the Spring of 2022. After practicing as a paralegal here in Austin, she decided to leave the field of law to join the Harbor Capital team as Investor Relations Coordinator. There, she employs both her creativity and systemization skills to foster Harbor Capital’s unique relationships with its investors. Miranda spends most of her free time making art or running with her labradoodle, Keanu.
Neil is a CFO & Advisor for growth companies and a former lead equity analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York where he helped to lead numerous transactions including Zipcar’s $1.1 billion IPO. Previously, he was an equity analyst at Barclays Capital & Lehman Brothers and began his career at a boutique investment bank where he helped to lead 15 advisory & financing transactions totaling $1.3 billion. He built his operational skills as a startup founder and CFO of an East Africa-focused impact investment firm. He is a CFA charterholder and Certified Management Accountant and received his MBA from the University of South Carolina.
Michael Girdley is the Chairman and co-founder of Dura Software, the second-largest software company in San Antonio. Michael is also a partner at the Geekdom Fund, a seed-stage tech venture capital fund that has invested in over 50 high-growth tech companies. Most recently, Michael led a private equity transaction that created the largest private tech company in San Antonio with Jungledisk buying a set of technology products out of global conglomerate, J2
Academically, Michael’s background is rooted in technology. He received a BS in Computer Science from Lafayette College (where he was a 4-year Division I swimmer). Michael began his career in San Francisco, where he held engineering and marketing roles at RSA Security and BEA WebLogic, where, at age 25, he was the lead product manager for a $300mm business.
In 2015, the San Antonio Business Journal named Michael “Man of the Year,” and in 2016, Geekdom presented him with their first-ever “Geek of the Year” award. His passions are his kids, his lovely wife, and growing San Antonio’s startup ecosystem.
Michael can be found on Twitter at @girdley and at his blog at girdley.com.
Tom is a successful entrepreneur, executive, and real estate operator with 35 years of capital markets and investing experience. In 2015 he founded Prudent Growth Partners, LLC, a real estate investment firm that, along with several affiliated entities, manages over $380 million in assets as of June 2022. Tom is responsible for over 55 current projects, and has completed over 85 transactions since 2015, with a resulting IRR to investors of 30%. The current portfolio includes neighborhood shopping centers, multifamily properties, industrial flex buildings, and single-tenant retail properties located throughout the Southeast and southern Midwest.
Prior to starting PGP, Tom co-founded Chapel Hill Brokers, an energy derivatives firm that was acquired by ICAP, the world's largest energy derivatives firm. He played a leadership role in many strategic acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategy decisions for the firm while also managing the US power derivatives businesses. He spent his early career on Wall Street as an oil derivatives trader at a private fund and two different global investment banks. Tom is an expert in acquisitions and dispositions, deal structuring, negotiation, management, finance, and investor relations. As a long-term participant in the real estate and capital markets, he has navigated a variety of economic cycles and interest rate environments, including the “great recession” of 2008 and the COVID pandemic of 2020-2021.
Tom is an active angel and VC/PE investor, with a successful track record in several startups, including Chapel Hill Broadband (exit in 2001), Bandwidth.com (IPO in 2017), Republic Wireless (acquired by DISH in 2020), Renewable Choice Energy (acquired by Schneider Electric in 2016), and Wedpics (exit in 2017). He currently has a diverse portfolio of private equity investments in over a dozen companies, primarily focused on FinTech and Consumer Products.
Tom is active in the Triangle community and has served on a variety of local non-profit boards, including as President of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Triangle and as a Trustee of Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill. He lives in Durham, NC with his wife, Jennifer, and their two sons.
Dr. Linda Ford is an executive coach. Her work is developing leaders who act with integrity and authenticity to create stronger organizations and communities on behalf of all their stakeholders.
Linda has been described as a maverick, entrepreneur, catalyst, leader, change agent. She is all of these. Ford improves her client’s performance by locating hard-to-spot patterns that slow teams down. Working one-on-one with senior leaders, she creates lasting change by helping leaders develop through their challenges so that the foundation for the business is deep and strong.
After earning her bachelor’s in mathematics, Linda became a software engineer for NASA. She continued to work inside large tech organizations for 15 years. From those experiences, she saw that the human side of organizations was often messier than the tech side so she returned to graduate school to complete her master’s and PhD in Human and Organization Systems. For 25 years, Linda has brought all of that knowledge and experience to her consulting and coaching work.
Dr. Ford is also the author of “The Fourth Factor: Managing Corporate Culture,” a practical, accessible book for managers who are serious about leading culture. Ford has served on the full-time faculty at both Concordia University Texas and St. Edwards University.