Meet the Team

Ileana Rabassa is the financial controller, responsible for day-to-day accounting, record keeping, and treasury management activities for the Firm and oversees the Firm’s Liquidity Committee.

During her career, Ms. Rabassa held a senior position in the real estate division for a global corporation, with $5.5 billion in annual revenue and over 20,000 employees. Thereafter, she worked for a firm focused on acquisitions and development, specifically within their hospitality department. Ms. Rabassa also oversaw the accounting for the development of a casino and a $300 million hotel for a resort-focused firm with over 700 acres of property. Prior to joining CGI, she was a corporate controller for a large development firm that specialized in multifamily and commercial projects.

Carl Burton is a Senior Director of Fundraising at CGI’s Toronto office. He has more than 15 years of corporate finance and capital markets experience in Canada and the U.S. At CGI, Mr. Burton works closely with the Investment Funds and Fundraising teams to provide intelligence and expand capital-raising efforts for the firm across the Canadian markets. His prior experience includes Industrial Alliance Securities, Firm Capital, Haywood Securities, and TD Bank Group. As a former equity research analyst at Industrial Alliance Securities, Mr. Burton gained extensive real estate experience while covering real estate investment trusts and real estate equities. He was also a portfolio manager of a debt and equity real estate fund and served on the investor relations team for Firm Capital, a non-bank lender providing residential and commercial real estate financing.

Mr. Burton earned a master of business administration in finance from Columbia Business School and a bachelor of arts from Bishop’s University. He is a CFA charterholder and a founding member of the Black Opportunity Fund, a dynamic partnership between businesses, philanthropists, foundations, and the Black community geared towards Black Canadian economic empowerment.

Vita Anes is an Associate on the Investment Funds team at CGI. In this role, she provides support to the critical operational areas of the business, including acquisitions, fundraising, and marketing. Prior to joining CGI, Ms. Anes was an Analyst at Citi in Miami, where she was part of the Treasury and Trade Solutions department. Before Citi, she worked as a Spring Analyst at AGC Partners, a TMT-focused investment bank in Boston.

Ms. Anes earned a master of science in finance with academic distinction from the University of Miami and a bachelor of science in finance, cum laude, from Northeastern University. She is also a CFA Exam Level II Candidate.

Sherina Hosein is a results-driven, experienced executive motivated to create successes for businesses and help clients achieve the same. At CGI, she combines conventional and forward-thinking approaches and utilizes world-class technology to enhance investor engagement to lead novel ways of fundraising and investor relations. With extensive cross-sectional experience, Ms. Hosein knows how to articulate and execute on differing strategies customized to a wide-ranging investor base.

Before joining CGI, she held leadership roles in private placements of bonds and securitized notes and bank syndicates up to $1 billion. In addition, Ms. Hosein worked with RBC (former RBTT Merchant Bank) and was a vice president with the financial group owned by billionaire Michael Lee-Chin. She also was a business consultant to an international project development group, where Ms. Hosein advised on new investments, business and financial models, and strategic planning for diversifying the real estate portfolio into other indigenous branded businesses such as a five-star hotel, mixed-use commercial and retail investment, and vehicle leasing. She also executed some of these business plans by holding executive positions for various companies established by the group in the United Arab Emirates.

Ms. Hosein earned a master of business administration in finance from Lincoln University in the United Kingdom and a bachelor of science in analytical chemistry with a minor in mathematics from the University of Toronto. Her past board positions include the State National Board (Regulatory Industries Commission) of Trinidad and Tobago, the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association, and the School Board of Dunross Preparatory.

Sheharyar Shaikh previously worked at an investment firm, assisting in the deployment of $15 billion across a wide range of industries and real estate. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and developed meaningful relationships with investors from the region. He has also worked at Big Four firms advising both large and small investment firms. Sheharyar Shaikh holds a MS in Finance and Management from Cranfield School of Management and an Engineering degree from Drexel University. He has also undertaken postgraduate management coursework at the Wharton School of Business.

Euclid Walker has over 26 years of investment and advisory experience with Institutional & family office clients for private equity, real estate and technology opportunities. Mr. Walker is Managing Partner of Parkway Investment Management, LLC, an Investment and Advisory firm focused on alternative investment management and restructuring and capital structure advisory services headquartered in Palm Beach, Florida. He is also Senior Partner and head of Private Markets for Global Oak Capital Markets, LLC a registered broker dealer and investment banking firm and founder of Opportunity Zone Advisors, LLC. He is an author and lecturer on direct alternative investing for family offices and institutional investors. Prior to founding Parkway he was a founding member of an SBIC licensed middle market investment firm with AUM of $400 million, where his responsibilities included marketing new funds and sourcing, analyzing, structuring, executing and monitoring investments from 2010-2013. He also founded Renascent Capital group in 2004 to provide strategic and capital raising advice to corporate clients and family offices. Prior to forming Renascent, Mr. Walker was an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division in the Corporate Finance and Mergers & Acquisitions Departments. 

He was with Morgan Stanley for over 10 years in various capacities. From 1993 until 1996, Mr. Walker worked in Morgan Stanley’s Private Equity group in New York where he focused on evaluating acquisitions for a $1.8 billion Real Estate Private Equity Fund. During this time he also advised Real Estate and lodging and leisure companies on capital raisings and Mergers and Acquisitions. He became one of two professionals in Johannesburg South Africa in 1996, where he focused on business development and the execution of complicated cross-border financings, mergers and acquisitions. While managing the Johannesburg office in 2001, Mr. Walker was asked to move to London to become the Operations Officer for Morgan Stanley’s Corporate Finance and Banking Departments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He worked in London overseeing a major restructuring of Morgan Stanley’s Corporate Finance and M&A departments. He moved to Chicago in 2003 to focus on corporate finance business development and execution for important clients in the Midwest region.  

Mr. Walker is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia with a BA in Business Administration with dual concentrations in Banking Finance and Real Estate and a minor in Economics where he currently serves as chair of the  

Trusteeship committee of Morehouse’s Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Palm Beach County Investment Policy Committee, United Way of Palm Beach Finance Committee and has served on the boards of the Benjamin School, Francis W. Parker School, LEAP Africa and Africare.  

Robert Festinger is the Vice President of Hospitality Asset Management at CGI. In this role, he leverages his three decades of industry experience across Chicago, New York, and South Florida markets to oversee the day-to-day hospitality operations and play an active role in the firm’s funds. Prior to joining CGI, Mr. Festinger served as vice president of hotel operations for Menin Hospitality, managing all day-to-day operations for the hospitality management and development company’s portfolio of hotels, including the Mondrian South Beach, Shelborne South Beach, Gale South Beach, Gale Boutique Hotel and Residences Fort Lauderdale, and Raffaello Chicago (now Gale Chicago). Going beyond his role, he also served as a mentor to property general managers and their management teams.

Mr. Festinger graduated from Hofstra University with a bachelor of arts in political science and economics and then held prominent management positions with notable hospitality brands, such as Hilton Hotels and Resorts, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and The Newport Beachside Hotel and Resort.

With over 25 years of investment and banking experience, Raoul Thomas knows the industry is about more than meets the eye. His approach to alternative investments is finding value where others can’t and putting capital back into the source of his success: the community.

Since founding CGI in 2006, Mr. Thomas has led the firm in applying strategic and effective management and financing to increase the value of its commercial real estate and infrastructure investments and turn assets into Class-A, fully operational ones.

He began his career as a banking regulator supervising international financial institutions licensed in the U.S., a position that enabled him to develop and nurture strong relationships worldwide. He was then recruited to undergo a “Management Development Program” at a global bulge bracket investment bank, where he worked structuring and executing large debt transactions in the global capital markets on behalf of sovereigns, public, and private corporations.

Mr. Thomas then went on to work overseas as an expatriate running the capital markets distribution platform for another global bulge bracket bank, where he spearheaded and executed successful high-profile regional transactions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Two years later, he transitioned to the buy-side as an executive for one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, where he was involved in overseeing investments in both the private and public sectors in the Caribbean and Latin America. This experience was the catalyst behind the formation of CGI Merchant Group in 2006.

Mr. Thomas sits on the Advisor Board of a U.S. bank and is an active member of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, New America Alliance, and Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce. He founded the Isabella Alycia Foundation (IA Foundation), an organization run by his daughter, Isabella Alycia Thomas. The IA Foundation makes a social impact in underprivileged neighborhoods and individuals through the provision of tools and capital resources.