Archives: Our Team

Mr. Cottone has a deep operational and financial background across multiple industries.  His focus at Tenex is on identifying and implementing operational initiatives, as well as working on the investment team to evaluate and underwrite investments.  Mr. Cottone is one of the founding Managing Directors of Tenex.

From 2004 to 2009, Mr. Cottone served as a Senior Operations Leader at Cerberus Capital Management.  His primary activities during this time included due diligence and operations support for two Cerberus portfolio companies:  Air Canada, where he supervised airline profitability improvement initiatives, and a manufacturing company where he served as the Vice President of Strategy, Supply Chain, Information Technology, and Integration.

Prior to joining Cerberus, Mr. Cottone was employed by GE, where he held various positions in Sales, Finance, and Operations, and management roles in engineering and sourcing in GE’s Edison Engineering Leadership Management Program.  Mr. Cottone was a member of GE’s Corporate Audit Staff, where he audited numerous GE industrial and financial services businesses and received his Six Sigma Black Belt certification.  He went on to serve as CFO of NBC’s Washington DC television station, the seventh-largest market in the US.  He became Vice President of Interactive, where he transformed the NBC-owned station’s on-line departments from a cost center into a profit center.  Mr. Cottone then moved into a Business Development and Commercial role within NBC, taking responsibility for revenue generation and inventory management for the NBC-owned stations throughout the Eastern United States and for the NBC-owned station in Miami, Florida.

Mr. Cottone currently serves, or has previously served, on the boards of Medical Solutions, Techniks, Rush Overland, JPW, US GreenFiber, Fairmont, Brown Machine (fka TTG), Hub Pen, and Custom Molded Products, among others.

Mr. Cottone holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Beth O’Brien is the Founder and CEO of CoreVest American Finance (“CoreVest”), the leading private lender to residential real estate investors. CoreVest was founded in 2014 to address the unique needs of investors in the single-family rental and bridge loan space who were not served well by either commercial or residential products. Under Beth’s leadership, CoreVest has closed almost $4 Billion in loans in that market and have issued over $1B in single-family rental bonds including the inaugural deal with Freddie Mac. Previously, Beth was Executive Vice President at Auction.com, where she ran residential capital markets, and was President of AuctionFinance.com, where she ran the financing strategy for the platform. In that capacity, she managed single-family and multi-family loan sales, and founded a proprietary private money lender geared at the investor market.

Beth also held prior positions at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Combined, she has over 25 years of experience in almost every aspect of the mortgage industry, as both a principal and an advisor. She has overseen more than $18 billion in transactions and was named in Housing Wire’s 2014 and 2018 Women of Influence, Mortgage Professionals America’s Elite Women in mortgages in both 2016 and 2017 and Globe Street’s 2016 Women of Influence in Commercial Real Estate. Beth is a member of the Forbes’ Real Estate Council and has numerous publications in Forbes, The Scotsman Guide, the M Report and MPA Magazine.

Beth O’Brien holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Bakke is a highly regarded real estate executive with over 30 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry.  He is currently Principal of Tidewater Real Estate Investments having retired in March 2019 as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Washington REIT, a $3 billion publically traded real estate investment trust based in Washington DC.  During his five year tenure, he led the complete turnaround of this multi-asset REIT that consisted of diverse portfolio of office buildings, retail centers and multi-family properties located throughout the DC metro area.  The turnaround not only included all processes and systems but also a wholesale change in leadership at all levels and a retooling of the entire portfolio.

Up until the end of 2012, he held the position of Market Managing Director for national commercial real estate owner – Equity Office Properties (EOP), a subsidiary of The Blackstone Group.  Equity Office Properties, founded by legendary investor Sam Zell of Chicago, was bought by The Blackstone Group in March 2007 in what was at the time the largest leveraged buyout in history.  Mr. Bakke had been instrumental in the growth and development of EOP from a small opportunistic investment company of 5 million square feet to a Fortune 100 REIT with over 150 million square feet of Class A office space prior to the sale.

Over his 20 plus years at EOP, he has held a variety of senior positions with the company and its predecessors including Senior Vice President, National Leasing, responsible for all marketing and leasing of the company’s 150 million square foot national portfolio and Senior Vice President, Field Operations with responsibilities for all leasing and property operations for EOP’s national portfolio prior the company’s public offering in 1997.

Prior to his real estate career he spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy with stints as an F-14 aviator and in logistics management.  He has a BS in Oceanography from the U.S. Naval Academy and a MBA in Finance, attending MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Golden Gate University.

Mr. Mundy oversees Oxford’s Washington DC office with a primary focus on investments and is a member of the North American executive team.

Mr. Mundy has over 25 years of real estate acquisitions, development, and operations experience. His previous leadership roles include EVP at Equity Office Properties (the largest publicly traded US REIT – $39 billion market value), CIO of Washington Real Estate Investment Trust and a Managing Principal at Rubenstein Partners.

Mr. Mundy received his undergraduate degree at Boston University and his MBA at The Wharton School.

Bruce brings his strategic insight and leadership experience to Steignet by offering innovative solutions in the software space.

Bruce was the former CEO of Adobe Systems, Inc. where his customer-focused vision transformed Adobe into one of the world’s largest and most diversified software companies in terms of revenue, global reach and breadth of products. As CEO from 2000 to 2007, Chizen tripled Adobe’s revenue and turned a company known mainly for its popular design products into one of the most significant forces in the software industry. Under Chizen’s leadership, Adobe acquired Macromedia, Inc. in 2005, in a transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. This acquisition brought together some of the industry’s strongest software brands and most ubiquitous technologies, and accelerated Adobe’s strategy to provide a powerful software platform that scales from mobile devices to enterprise servers. With this platform, Adobe gained access to more desktops and end users than any other technology vendor. In addition to growing Adobe’s leadership in design and publishing software, Chizen led the company’s expansion into new markets, including enterprise, knowledge worker and consumer. During Chizen’s tenure, Adobe consistently ranked near the top of Fortune Magazine’s annual report on the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Prior to becoming CEO, Chizen was executive vice president of worldwide products and marketing. At Adobe since 1994, he was previously vice president and general manager of both the professional graphics division and Adobe’s consumer division. From 1980 to 1983, he worked in Mattel Electronics’ merchandising group, helping grow it to a $500 million business. In 1983, Chizen joined Microsoft Corporation eventually becoming the company’s eastern region sales director. In 1987, he joined Claris Corporation, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc., as a founding senior manager and later held positions as vice president of sales and worldwide marketing before becoming vice president and general manager of Claris Clear Choice.

Bruce holds a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He currently serves on the boards of Oracle Corporation, Informatica, and Synopsys Inc., as well as a number of non-profit boards.  Bruce also represents Voyager on the board of Make.tv. Additionally, he holds the position as Senior Adviser to Permira Advisers, LLC.