ESG and Independent Sponsors - Are you behind the eight ball?

With more than 11 years of experience in finance, public accounting, and transaction diligence, she helps clients by assessing quality of earnings, working capital, financial reporting infrastructure, controls, and value drivers of their investments. Her industry experience includes consumer, retail, media, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, renewable energy, hospitality, and cannabis.

In 2018, Elena helped launch CohnReznick’s Cannabis practice and pioneered early due diligence work in the space. Before joining the firm, she worked at several Big Four firms where she was responsible for audits of large public and private companies across several industries as well as transaction diligence of acquisition targets. Her experience includes consulting as an interim CFO; assisting public companies with financial reporting, modeling, analysis, compliance, and corporate governance; and preparing and filing SEC forms and other information such as 10-Ks, 10-Qs, 8-Ks, MD&A and S-1 registration statements. She has also worked with companies in the process of going public via IPOs, reverse mergers, and PIPE transactions and obtaining a listing on NASDAQ and OTCBB. 

Most recently, Heidi was a Vice President at The Carlyle Group within the Managed Accounts Investment Programs group, which managed strategic partnerships with large institutional investors.

Prior to Carlyle and Broad Sky, Heidi was at Investcorp, where she worked in an investor relations/portfolio management role in their private equity group. Heidi started her career at Arthur Andersen in its Corporate Finance Group, providing M&A advisory services.

Heidi earned her MBA from IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain and earned her BBA from EU Business School, Antwerp, Belgium.

Aundre’s role as a founding partner at AoRa is to find, evaluate, underwrite, and raise capital for add value and new construction deals. He implements various strategies to find off-market deals from a vast network of brokers and institutional sources. Once acquired, he helps manage the process from start to finish, working alongside the team, ensuring the latest technologies are applied for the most efficient and expedient building methods.

He is a construction technology expert in leading innovations, advising governmental agencies such as NYC DOB and HUD. He speaks on various panels and podcasts about his work. Aundre focuses on sustainability, super insulation, renewable energy systems, PropTech for property management solutions, and modular construction. He uses municipal tax incentives, and other strategic financing vehicles to achieve highly leveraged, low interest capital. As a result, he increases investor IRR. 

Aundre holds certifications from the Cornell commercial real estate program and Columbia Construction Finance Management. The programs covered acquisition, managing developments, financing the deal, property management, asset management, and underwriting, accurately providing cost estimates, quantity takeoffs, feasibility, financial modeling, and risk management. 

He serves as the Chairman of the Off-Site Construction 

Council with the National Institute of Building Science, a board member of EIC PACE (Property Accessed Clean Energy), and is a member of the New York Real Estate Chamber. He partnered with Future Insights to win the NYC Building Hackathon contest. The joint venture will soon be working with the NYC building department to implement an automated permitting software that decreases their permitting process up to 80%, adding millions in revenue with more transactions, new RE taxes, and reducing employment costs. 

He creates a competitive advantage for AoRa with the ability to build projects 50% faster, up to 25% cheaper, with better quality, and less contingencies over traditional construction methods. He studies the latest in building materials, building techniques, pre fab, construction robotics, etc. We use the latest technology in renewable energy sources from solar, cogeneration, geothermal, and radiant heating to lower utility costs and increase NOI.