Leadership

Jay is an innovative leader who uses his creativity and imagination to uncover opportunities in today’s challenging retail and real estate industries. His talent lies in building relationships and making strategic connections. 

Jay started in the music industry developing multi-city tours for top recording artists for Clive Davis' Arista Record. In 1997, Jay founded Tastemakers Media, which published a cutting-edge magazine throughout the US featuring the best retail and lifestyle offerings domestically and abroad. Currently, Jay is the CEO of GUESST® Software, as well as his company Lifestyle Equities.

At heart, Jay is a small to medium-sized business growth executive, continually looking to maximize resources, build relationships, and identify growth opportunities. He has been effectuating Retail-Matchmaking in the analog space for many years leading to the founding of the GUESST® Platform. This platform provides property owners a view of daily real-time sales data that allows for creative and flexible leasing to occur with DTC brands, traditional retail, and restaurant tenants.

Jay brings over 15 years of experience in lifestyle and experiential marketing for commercial real estate. This led to the growth of Lifestyle Equities. His real estate brokerage career flourished as a Director for Marcus Millichap and then Eastern Consolidated Properties, successfully representing retail, restaurant, and office tenants throughout New York.

Living at the intersection of real estate, retail, and technology, Jay leverages his unique multi-industry knowledge as he identifies pain points and imagines strategic solutions.

Dennis is a seasoned broker and transactional advisor who leverages his technical attention to detail, negotiating skills and deep market knowledge to help clients confidently navigate and close their most complex and strategic deals.

With a B.S. in Business Administration from the School of Business and Industry at Florida
A&M University, an M.S. in Real Estate Investment from NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate
and a 30 year track record as an analyst, advisor and principal broker in major U.S. gateway markets, Dennis delivers wide ranging functional expertise in brokerage, transaction management, strategic planning, consulting, market research, financial modeling and portfolio administration. His client base focuses on major anchor tenants, and he provides agency representation to real estate asset management companies, owner-operators, as well as consulting services to national and local developers.

Dennis believes in the power of commercial real estate ownership to empower and enrich communities.  With years serving as a committed Trustee of organizations as diverse as the Federal City Council, the Real Estate Executive Council and the Boys and Girls Clubs, Dennis connects CEOs and key real estate decision makers across the country with advocates, tenants and partners who expand their mission.

Under Dennis’s leadership, CIVITAS has expanded from its origin story in the nation’s capital to national coverage of some of the country’s largest commercial anchor tenants and government clients. Dennis’s expertise is frequently sought as a speaker for ULI and ICSC and as a contributor for Fortune and the Washington Business Journal.