Team

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.

Brian McCarthy is a visionary leader with a passion for sustainability and innovation. As Co-Founder of Archaea Energy, one of the largest renewable natural gas (RNG) producers in the U.S., Brian played a pivotal role in revolutionizing the renewable energy industry.

Through Brian’s adept management of Archaea’s renewable gas commercial partnerships and offtake, business development and finances, the company quickly established itself as a dominant player in the renewable energy sector. In 2022,  BP acquired Archaea Energy, setting a new industry standard.

Before his time at Archaea, Brian served as a partner at Saltonstall and Co. (S&Co.), where he identified energy investment opportunities and supported sustainable capital growth. His analytical skills were further honed during his tenures as an analyst at Stevens Capital Management, Schneider Capital Management, and Goldman Sachs.

Beyond these professional accomplishments, Brian actively contributes to his local community, where he holds a leadership role within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He has also returned to S&Co., where he currently serves as a partner. He is a proud graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Physics and Economics, and resides in Pennsylvania with his wife Anne and their four children.

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.

Meredith Christensen brings over 20 years of real estate advisory and investment experience.  Her professional career includes ground-up development, large-scale redevelopment projects, leasing, sales, and fund investments. Her in-depth understanding of the stages of real estate investment life cycles creates tremendous value when evaluating risk while also driving returns for investors. Ms. Christensen has held prominent positions at JLL, CBRE, MITiCo (MIT’s investment arm of the endowment fund), and currently serves as the senior director of project development for Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.  Ms. Christensen has an undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont in Business and Chinese and a master’s degree from Tufts University in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy.

Jim is the President of Avalana Advisors, a boutique consulting firm that provides advice to asset managers, institutional investors, and FinTech startups around product strategy, design and marketing and portfolio construction.  Previously he was a Managing Director at PIMCO where he started and grew the Liability-Driven Investment business to $160 billion in assets and founded the Investment Solutions Group which worked with clients globally on portfolio design, implementation, and risk management and bespoke investment mandates. Prior to PIMCO, Jim was in the Derivatives Products Group at Morgan Stanley, designed and underwrote credit risk transfer products at Enhance Reinsurance, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center.

He has a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with concentrations in Finance, Insurance, and Risk Management.  His undergraduate degrees are in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University where he rowed crew.  Jim has a passion for mathematics education and financial literacy and is actively involved with several charities focused on their advancement.

Brian McCarthy is a visionary leader with a passion for sustainability and innovation. As Co-Founder of Archaea Energy, one of the largest renewable natural gas (RNG) producers in the U.S., Brian played a pivotal role in revolutionizing the renewable energy industry.

Through Brian’s adept management of Archaea’s renewable gas commercial partnerships and offtake, business development and finances, the company quickly established itself as a dominant player in the renewable energy sector. In 2022,  BP acquired Archaea Energy, setting a new industry standard.

Before his time at Archaea, Brian served as a partner at Saltonstall and Co. (S&Co.), where he identified energy investment opportunities and supported sustainable capital growth. His analytical skills were further honed during his tenures as an analyst at Stevens Capital Management, Schneider Capital Management, and Goldman Sachs.

Beyond these professional accomplishments, Brian actively contributes to his local community, where he holds a leadership role within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He has also returned to S&Co., where he currently serves as a partner. He is a proud graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Physics and Economics, and resides in Pennsylvania with his wife Anne and their four children.

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.