Team
Arialgo Team
Roni Appel
Roni Appel is an experienced investor, executive and board member in private and public healthcare companies, with a strong legal, financial, and entrepreneurial background. He has a strong track record at the investor, board and management level and extensive experience in trading, investing, financing, company building and management.
Between 2013 and 2019, Mr. Appel was a partner at RSO Group LLC, a private US based investment and advisory company. Mr. Appel raised funds, acted as the managing partner and successfully implemented a quantitative approach to public REIT investing. Between 2008 and 2013, Mr. Appel was the Co-Founder and CEO of Anima Biotech, Inc, a drug discovery company using a breakthrough technology based on tracking rates or protein production in living cells. Between 2002 and 2007, he was the founder and CEO of Advaxis, Inc (NASDAQ: ADXS), a biotechnology company targeting breast, anal, lung, cervical cancer and other cancers. He took the company public in 2004. In addition, Mr. Appel served as a board member between 2002 and 2019, and as a member of the audit committee between 2013 and 2019, and as chair of the compensation committee between 2013 and 2015. Between 1999 and 2004 he was a managing director at LibertyView Capital Management, LP, a $500 mm hedge fund based in NJ. Between 1998 and 1999 he was a member of the founding team and the Director of business development of Americana Financial Services, Inc, a New York based insurance company growing through acquisitions. The company was sold for $300 million in late 2005 (named as AMWINS). Between 1994 and 1996 Mr. Appel was a Commercial Lawyer at I. Gornitzky & Co., Advocates & Notaries, a law firm ranked as one of the top ten corporate and commercial law firms in Israel. Mr. Appel holds an MBA degree from Columbia University(1998) and an LLB from Haifa University Law School (1994).
Prof. Assaf Zeevi
Assaf Zeevi is Professor and holder of the Kravis chair at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Operations Research, Statistics, and Machine Learning. In particular, he has been developing theory and algorithms for reinforcement learning, Bandit problems, stochastic optimization, statistical learning and stochastic networks. Assaf's work has been applied in online retail, healthcare analytics, dynamic pricing, recommender systems, and social learning in online marketplaces.
Assaf received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. (Cum Laude) from the Technion, in Israel, and subsequently his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He spent time as a visitor at Stanford University, the Technion and Tel Aviv University. He is the recipient of several teaching and research awards including a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, an IBM Faculty Award, Google Research Award, as well as several best paper awards including the 2019 Lanchester Prize.
Board / Advisory Board
Robert Ivanhoe
Robert J. Ivanhoe is Vice Chair of Greenberg Traurig and Co-Chair of the REIT Practice. He concentrates his practice in sophisticated real estate structures, financings, workouts, restructurings, acquisitions and dispositions of all asset classes of real estate. Robert is actively involved in real estate industry current affairs and is regularly asked to write and lecture on industry topics.
Robert has been recognized by Chambers and Partners USA, The New York Observer and Real Estate New York as one of the leading real estate attorneys in New York City and throughout the United States. He has represented numerous nationally-recognized owner/developer and institutional lender/investor clients domestically and internationally for more than 30 years. Robert is a member of the firm's Executive Committee, Board of Directors and Operating Committee.
Prof. Scott Robinson
Mr. Robinson is a senior commercial real estate professional with extensive REIT, bulge-bracket, and middle-market experience in capital markets, investment banking, and credit analysis. Mr. Robinson is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Finance at the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate, where he is also Program Coordinator for the Finance & Investment curriculum and Director of the REIT Center.
Additionally, Mr. Robinson is a Managing Director and co-head of real estate investment banking at Oberon Securities. Mr. Robinson’s teaching portfolio currently includes Real Estate Capital Markets, REIT Securities Analysis, and the Applied Project in Finance & Investment. He has previously taught Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Corporate Finance, and Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities. His oversight of the REIT Center allows him to introduce graduate students to the dynamic and fast-paced intersection of Wall Street and real estate, through student-generated content and industry events.
David Hirsh
David Hirsh is a sophisticated real estate investor with more than 30 years of experience across all major real estate product types in most major US markets. Over the course of his career, David has completed in excess of $30 billion in transactions and has developed a broad set of skills the including: portfolio management, leasing, asset sales/dispositions, lending and workouts/restructuring. In addition, David has a proven track record creating value rebranding hotels and strategically repositioning office buildings.
David spent approximately sixteen years (2002-2018) in Blackstone’s Real Estate Asset Management Group, retiring in January 2018. During his tenure at Blackstone, his most significant responsibilities included day to day oversite and strategic management of Equity Office Properties (2009-2018), IndCor Industrial Properties (2013-2015), LXR Hotels and Resorts portfolio (2004-2010) and several investments in the retail and senior housing sectors. Prior to joining Blackstone, David worked at Citigroup for approximately 15 years including six years in real estate asset management, where he led the hotel group, and five years in corporate finance specializing in corporate real estate and project lending.
David received a BBA in Accounting from Pace University and an MS in Real Estate Development and Investment from New York University.
David is involved in many philanthropic efforts which include fighting thyroid, head and neck cancer (THANC Foundation) and supporting families suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (CaringKind). He also is active with New York University (Adjunct professor and Vice Chair of the Advisory Board at the Schack Institute of Real Estate and a Member of Executive Advisory Board of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute) and Pace University (Trustee).
Ted Bigman
Mr. Bigman brings to our Advisory Board deep investment and real estate experience and insights into the perspectives of institutional investors. Mr. Bigman has more than 30 years of investment experience in the REIT industry. Mr. Bigman held various positions at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Inc. (MSIM), where he built MSIM's Global Listed Real Assets business and grew the business from inception to a peak of more than $25 billion of assets under management by utilizing a value-oriented investment process.
Mr. Bigman led a global investment team with offices in NYC, Amsterdam and Singapore and had an institutional client base consisting of large domestic and global corporate and public pension plans, sovereign wealth funds and endowments and foundations. For most clients, it was their initial investment in listed property.
Awarded the NAREIT Industry Achievement Award in 2011 as a recognition of his leadership in convincing institutions to utilize global listed properties as part of their real estate allocation.
Mr. Bigman holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Brandeis University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.