Seattle Retail & Hospitality Summit

25+ years of expertise in the retail real estate industry working on behalf of national retailers and across a diverse portfolio of best-in-class premiere mixed-use real estate including retail, office, residential and hotels. Known for developing and nurturing long term relationships with retailers and landlords by better understanding their business goals and metrics. Experienced luxury multi-family residential leader. Proven sales record and ability to successfully take on new and complex business challenges.

Maria has over 30 years of diverse commercial real estate experience in disciplines ranging from development, sales and leasing, to asset management and finance. Maria and the Real Retail team exclusively represent over three-quarters of a million square feet of urban mixed-use centers and new community and lifestyle centers in the greater Seattle area including past and present notable projects such as Amazon’s World Headquarters, Rainier Square, Kirkland Urban, Ballard Blocks I & II, Everett Riverfront, The Meridian, 7th & Pine and TwoPine. Maria’s past experience also includes the successful lease-up of ground up developments including of Green Lake Village, Grand Ridge Plaza in Issaquah, Kent Station in Kent, and Bella Bottega in Redmond where she played a leadership role in pre-development, pre-marketing and transaction phase of the development cycle on each project. Maria’s present and past experience is also comprised of facilitating several specialty retailers and restaurants in their expansion strategies in the Pacific Northwest including: Equinox, Soul Cycle, Shake Shack, Sephora, Athleta, Old Navy, William Sonoma, West Elm, Trader Joe’s and The Container Store. Using the knowledge and expertise she acquired while working on a wide range of projects of all sizes throughout the region, Maria provides her clients with extensive information and awareness about the unique retail environment in the Pacific Northwest. Maria approaches each assignment as a partnership to ensure long-term project and tenant success. While working at Wright Runstad & Company Maria provided retail leasing, operations and property management services for their Class A office portfolio. This experience gives Maria valuable insight and lends a holistic approach to the challenges of leasing. While at Teranomics Retail Services, Maria was a strong contributor to the Seattle Office’s overall success and helped instigate the Teranomics merger with Federal Realty. Maria later acquired the rights to the Seattle Office of Teranomics which she parlayed into a partnership with Blatteis Realty for several years. In 2004 Maria formed Real Retail and has since maintained a dominant role in the retail landscape in the Greater Seattle Region. Prior positions include a Sales & Marketing Associate with Colliers - The Seeley Company in Los Angeles. While earning a degree in Business Administration, with a dual emphasis in Finance & Marketing at the University of Southern California, Maria also held a variety of internship positions including an advertising and marketing internship at New World Pictures in Los Angeles, an industrial brokerage internship at Grubb & Ellis Brokerage firm in Torrance, and also worked as a retail sales associate at Ann Taylor in Century City where she was a top producer selling to entertainment industry wardrobers. Maria is a past member of the Board of Directors for Plymouth Housing Group, where she served as Co-Chair for three years for Seattle Dances, a high-profile event where local celebrities and professional dancers perform in support of Plymouth Housing Group. She is on the President’s Round Table of the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) and a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). Maria grew up in Seattle where she attended Forest Ridge Girls School and Seattle Preparatory School.

Tobi Wray is the Owner | Founder of Design Well Spent Co., an award-winning interior design firm specializing in retail and hospitality design in Seattle, WA. With over 15 years of experience, Tobi is a NCIDQ-certified professional, member of the IIDA, the PNW Chapter President of the Retail Design Institute, and the recipient of several design awards including RDI International Store Design of the Year Award, IIDA’s Best INshow Award, and design:retail magazine's 40 under 40 in 2018. Prior to launching her business, Tobi was the Senior Manager of Design for Specialty Retail at Amazon.com where she led a team of interior designers, architects, and industrial designers in coming up with new retail design concepts for the online giant - Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, and Presented by Amazon, to name a few. Prior to Amazon, Tobi led the America's Concept Design team at Starbucks Coffee Company, developing new concepts for Starbucks and their emerging brands, including TAZO Tea and Teavana. Tobi earned her Bachelor's of Fine Arts Degree in Interior Design from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA where she has taught part-time in the Interior Architecture Department.

Carissa is committed to shaping the built environment through carefully orchestrating systems of people, movement, light, texture, history, biology, and technology. For over a decade her focus on mixed-use project design at GGLO has helped hone her sense for design opportunities that come with the densification of urban centers and reimagining underutilized sites. Her work is specifically focused on walkable urban cores, transit adjacent development and the reinvention of retail centers toward their highest and best use. Since 2018 she has been engaged in the redevelopment of the Northgate Mall Station site and is currently focused on the delivery of the residential buildings associated with the project. Most recently she has been engaged in the design of several sites associated with the extension of link light rail in Seattle as well as the eastside extension into Bellevue and Redmond including the redevelopment of the Redmond Town Center site. Additionally, she helps lead GGLO’s DEI efforts championing design equity in the development of both affordable and market rate projects. Carissa lives in Ballard with her partner and 2 dogs.

Jenne brings over 20 years of hospitality to her role with Columbia Hospitality. Prior to joining Columbia, she spent over 17 years with Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, working as General Manager of the Alexis Hotel for 9 years and then as Regional Director of Operations, overseeing a portfolio of 4 hotels in Seattle. Jenne moved on to become Vice President of Operations at Domicile, a Madrona Ventures hospitality start-up combining premium apartments with luxury hotel services. During this time, Jenne also worked with several Seattle boutique hotel owners as an asset manager and operations consultant. Jenne is a graduate of University of Montana and has served on a number of tourism boards, including the Seattle Hotel Association, Washington Hospitality Association and Hospitality PAC. She also served as a Board Member for Visit Seattle, the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area and Metropolitan Improvement District Board. In her free time Jenne enjoys being anywhere near the water, from the warm Pacific Ocean in Hawaii to crisp icy rivers and lakes of Montana. She can be found on her paddle board or sitting with a good book and her feet in the water.

Tom Wolf is 42+ year veteran of Hyatt. He began his career as a reservations clerk, and has since worked at 14 different Hyatt properties in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Aruba and southern California before moving to Seattle in 2012. Mr. Wolf has been General Manager at the Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Olive 8, and the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. In April 2018, he moved back downtown to open the 1260 room Hyatt Regency Seattle and most recently complexed the three Hyatt convention core hotels mid-2020. His properties consistently achieve company-high NPS and colleague engagement scores. Raised in Chicago, Illinois, Mr. Wolf attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan with a major in hotel/restaurant management and DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois with a major in business management.

Vince Stroop is an award-winning architect, designer, and photographer. Prior to founding the stroop design studio, he served as Partner & Executive Design Director at the renowned New York firms of Jeffery Beers International and Stonehill Taylor and additionally held the role of Principal at BBGM and Partner & Co-Founder at A2 Studios. Over the past 30 years, he sharpened his design expertise working across wineries, libraries, restaurants & bars, exhibitions, hotels & resorts, and all levels of residential developments. He has directed projects for major hospitality brands including Raffles, Rosewood, Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, One&Only, IHG, Equinox, NoMad Hotels, The Sydell Group, JLL, Chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, and for several boutique ventures. Always looking to explore creative outlets, he has led exhibition design for installations at Fuorisalone in Milan, Seattle Design Festival, Hotel Interiors Experience (HIX) in London, and an award-winning pop-up hotel concept featured during the Independent Hotel Conference in Amsterdam. He has been a featured speaker and panelist at industry events, most notably for Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Design Milk, Apartment Therapy, and NPR. He is a licensed architect in New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Connecticut, Massachusetts, & Georgia. NCARB certified and a member of NAIOP. Vince travels extensively, is an avid baker, loves the outdoors, is a runner, a skier and has recently taken to cold water swimming.

During Nate's over 15-year tenure with Mortenson, he has been instrumental in developing our hospitality, residential, and multi-family market expertise within the Pacific Northwest. As Director of Project Development, Nate engages and collaborates from preconstruction to closeout, ensuring that we exceed owner goals and expectations while striving to deliver an exceptional client experience. Over the course of his career, Nate has developed an expertise within modular solutions, working to apply them across a multitude of product types. He works to inform partners on how best to navigate the unique components within prefabricated strategies and deliver tailor-made solutions that maximize cost while mitigating risk. His knowledge has helped numerous modular projects come to fruition, most recently the citizenM Hotel at South Lake Union and citizenM Menlo Park (currently under construction). Nate obtained his Bachelor’s in Construction Management from Brigham Young University and is a LEED accredited professional.

Marissa Alkhazov is the Northwest Chair of Buchalter’s Product Liability Practice Group. Her clients include small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, emerging businesses, manufacturers, distributors, retail, hospitality and food and beverage corporations. Marissa’s client base of brands boasts a global and U.S. based presence. In the retail and hospitality space, Marissa works with her clients to assist in addressing the full spectrum of legal issues they face, including general counseling, labor and employment, leasing and landlord/tenant issues, premises liability, risk assessment, real estate and development, construction related claims and more. Marissa has experience in all phases of these types of matters, including at the trial and appellate level. Marissa understands there is nothing ordinary about the challenges business leaders face in this space. The multi-faceted nature of retail and hospitality work requires counsel that are capable of synthesizing numerous complex moving parts, while also minimizing risk and disruptions by ensuring assets are operated efficiently and all liabilities are managed effectively. Marissa immerses herself in her clients’ business environment to clarify goals, and is a highly effective negotiator and trial attorney, where necessary. Marissa anticipates regulatory hurdles and seeks practical solutions to clients’ compliance obligations across the lifecycle of a project or major initiative.