Aaron Feiler

Chief Executive Officer

BIO

Throughout the late-1990s into the mid-2010s, Dr. Aaron Feiler spent close to two decades developing and growing the family-owned dental healthcare platform under the Eastern Dental and Dimensional Management brands, while simultaneously building a multi-million-dollar commercial real estate investment, management and development company called East Gate Alliance. Aaron credits his success in both of these business ventures to his ability to identify and gather talented people, grow their strengths and build strong relationships. He has excellent expertise in identifying opportunity, foreseeing market trends, creating and managing teams and systems for growth and expanding business opportunities through acquisitions and developing scalable platforms. Aaron continues to focus on delivering real value, financial growth and positive social and environmental change through his family office’s focused commercial real estate investment platform. 

Aaron and his teams have structured successful sales of companies and real estate assets, including the sale of Dimensional Management, a multi-state healthcare company and Dental Services Organization coupled with a highly regulated insurance company, in 2016 to a leading private equity firm. At the time of sale, the company oversaw 32 multi-state offices and was generating revenues in excess of $80 million dollars and EBITDA of over $18 million per year. After the sale of Dimensional Management in 2016, Aaron has continued to build out East Gate Alliance’s investment portfolio to include various types of commercial real estate assets including retail, mixed-use, industrial, medical office and multifamily properties. He also leads his family office in its impact investing endeavors with a focus on resource conservation and improving local, underserved communities. He seeks programs that are a natural fit for his vision of making an impact on the environment and the local community. 

Aaron earned his DDS from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, after graduating from the University of Connecticut where he played football for the UConn Huskies. He is licensed to practice dentistry in nine states and is a member of various state and local dental associations throughout the United States. He also holds memberships with both the NJ Business Association and the Real Estate Developers Association, and for nearly 10 years he has been a preferred 7-Eleven developer for the state of New Jersey. Aaron is passionately committed to enacting global and local initiatives that positively impact the environment, healthcare and in education.

David Portner

Chief Investment Officer

BIO

David has spent the better part of his near 20-year professional career focused on providing clients with superior financial services in various positions and markets. After graduating from Cornell University in 2001, and following a brief stint as a Materials and Process Engineer for Corning Incorporated from 2001 to 2003, David decided to pursue his passions within the financial services and investment management industries.

After obtaining his MBA and Masters of Engineering in Operations from University of Michigan in 2005, David went on to trade Agency Adjustable-Rate Mortgage-Backed Securities (Agency ARMs) for Bank of America Securities in New York City, now known as Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In 2010, David and his family moved to Charlotte NC where he was afforded the opportunity to run the Agency ARM desk for Wells Fargo Securities after it had purchased Wachovia Securities’ sales and trading business during the Great Recession. In that role, David built the Agency ARM trading business from scratch, including all of the necessary technology, trade settlement infrastructure, securities modelling tools and customer relationships. Within less than a year, David found himself successfully overseeing a balance sheet of securities and associated hedges worth well over $1 billion, with a customer-facing and liquidity-generating trading business that produced over $30 million per year of P&L for Wells Fargo Securities.

After eight long and stressful years trading mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street, David moved on in late 2014 to work as a Senior Treasury Analyst in the Corporate Treasury department at Teachers Insurance Annuity Association (TIAA). Initially stationed at TIAA’s largest campus in Charlotte NC, David eventually transferred up to TIAA’s corporate office in 2017 to continue in that role, providing internal financial services and oversight on corporate accounting, investment program asset allocation, cash management, foreign exchange risk and cash liquidity for the firm. However, shortly after moving from Charlotte NC to the NJ/NY area, David seized on the opportunity to join East Gate Alliance as it’s Chief Investment Officer in April of 2018. Since then, David has been integral to the furtherance of East Gate Alliance’s goals of expanding the company’s investment presence in the commercial real estate market and putting the proper infrastructure in place to further its desire to provide superior risk-adjusted returns to its investors and business partners.

David earned his Bachelor of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University, graduating with Cum Laude honors in 2001. He earned his dual MBA and Master of Engineering in Operations from University of Michigan in 2005. David is an expert in lean manufacturing concepts, is Six Sigma Green Belt certified and has extensive experience and knowledge within the capital markets and financial services industries.

Allyson Zenkert

Director of Operations

BIO

Allyson Zenkert has been working as Director of Operations for East Gate Alliance since July 2015. Upon joining East Gate Alliance, Allyson was instrumental in building out a more formal infrastructure for the family office’s vast portfolio of commercial real estate assets. She successfully converted all building, lease and management information and associated systems to East Gate Alliance’s current comprehensive commercial real estate management model. Her strengths reside primarily in her attention to detail and exemplary organizational skills. In her current role at East Gate Alliance, she is responsible for all tenant relations, leasing activities, facilities management, third party property management oversight and all project management duties with respect to any of East Gate Alliance’s development and/or construction-related projects.

For many years prior to working at East Gate Alliance, Allyson was previously employed by the PGA TOUR, Inc. as a Player Relations Coordinator where she acted as a liaison between the Commissioner of the TOUR and the players on TOUR.

Allyson earned her Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Public Relations from University of Connecticut, graduating Cum Laude in 1998. Allyson lives at the Jersey Shore with her husband and their three kids. They are usually at a sports field on any given weekend or spending time together as a family.

Michael DiFede

Director of Acquisitions

BIO

After several years as a VISTA Volunteer and a community organizer during his undergraduate years at Pratt Institute, Michael started his real estate career in 1981 as a lease reviewer with TIAA and within three years was promoted to Asset Manager and was responsible for several million square feet of major office properties in Tampa, Detroit and Chicago. He then joined the acquisitions group at Citicorp Investment Management where he was responsible for creating and managing joint venture relationships in a variety of markets on behalf of pension fund clients such as General Motors and Westinghouse and offshore investors located in the Middle East. He was a co-founder of the mortgage brokerage firm AFC Realty Capital and also worked at and Real Estate Capital Partners in an acquisition role before returning to Citicorp to resume working in his previous role. In 2001, Michael joined The Bergman Real Estate Group, an owner-operator of office properties in New Jersey. Through his efforts and institutional relationships, during his 19-year tenure at Bergman, Michael expanded its investor base from a single high net worth investor to many institutional investors including GE Capital, Bank of America/South Charles, Strategic Capital Partners, NDC Capital/Dome Equities, Time Equities, Rialto Capital and many others. Michael received a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute where he also studied Urban Planning in the graduate program.

Rick Rodriguez

Controller

BIO

Rick Rodriguez has worked in various accounting and financial services roles throughout his career and within a variety of industries including logistics, textiles, telecommunications, medical education, pharmaceuticals and commercial real estate, where he has been the Controller for East Gate Alliance and the Feiler family office since 2016. His previously held positions were with companies such as UPS, International Terminal Operations, Telemedia International, Cellular Information Systems, KnowledgePoint360 Group and ConnectiveRx, with the majority of his career spent in accounting-related roles in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries.

Just prior to coming to work at East Gate Alliance, Rick worked as a project cost accountant with PSKW LLC, which offers payment assistance programs and biopharma loyalty marketing services. The company eventually merged with PDR (Prescribers Digital Reverence) and is now known as ConnectiveRx, a technology-enabled life science services firm. Rick was a consistent outperformer at ConnectiveRx and was rapidly promoted to positions of higher responsibility such as senior staff accountant, where he was assigned his own team of accountants to manage in a fast-paced work environment responsible for over $1.7 billion in client programs and funding. Rick and his team serviced clients including companies such as AstraZeneca, Allergan, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Pfizer. During his time at ConnectiveRx, Rick was able to apply his technical and accounting background during the merger process and was involved in software implementations and integrations associated with the merging of books and records, custom report building and cross-training of many employees.

Upon leaving ConnectiveRx to join East Gate Alliance in 2016, Rick’s impact to the family office’s operations, finance and accounting were immediately realized. Rick was responsible for onboarding an entirely new accounting platform, setting up all quarterly and annual reporting and putting in proper policies and procedures to ensure sound corporate governance practices were in place for the company. To this very day, Rick continues to be instrumental in East Gate Alliance’s daily accounting and cash management activities and is also heavily involved in handling all accounting-related matters for the company’s external investor base.

Rick has a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting and Finance from New Jersey City University. He is a proud father of one and grandfather of one as well.