Speakers - Blueprint Vegas

Joseph Aamidor

Aamidor Consulting

Joseph Aamidor is an experienced product leader and expert in smart buildings, real estate technology and facility operations. He provides product and market strategy guidance to building owners/operators, established building management firms, technology providers, investors, and early-stage innovators. Previously, he served as Director of Product at Lucid Design Group and was a product manager at Johnson Controls. He is an internationally recognized speaker and a frequent contributor to leading industry publications such as Propmodo, Greentech Media, Built Worlds and CRE Tech. Joseph Aamidor graduated from Indiana University’s top-ranked School of Public and Environment Affairs.

Michael Gilbert

Fairstead

Michael Gilbert is a dynamic energy and sustainability professional with extensive knowledge of technology, policy and finance. Michael currently serves in two roles at Fairstead and Fairstead Ventures. At Fairstead, a multi-family real estate owner/operator developer with hundreds of buildings across the country, Michael serves as Director of Energy and Sustainability. Michael identifies opportunities for improvements in sustainability performance, design, operation, and net operating income that can be actualized within Fairstead’s real estate portfolio. In his role at Fairstead Ventures, which partners with proptech innovators to deploy leading edge solutions for affordable housing, Michael acts as Director of Cleantech, Proptech, and Decarbonization. Here, he leverages his deep expertise of both building systems and the Fairstead Portfolio, along with his robust network of contacts, to identify solutions and strategic VC investment opportunities. Collaborating with internal stakeholders, VC partners, startups, and public sector agencies, he strives to implement innovative technologies and drive positive change within the real estate sector. Prior to his time at Fairstead and Fairstead Ventures, Michael worked for Consolidated Edison, the local utility servicing the New York City metropolitan area, where he led business development programs on energy efficiency, demand management, demand response, distributed generation, and EVs. He worked directly with the region’s largest commercial, industrial, and multi-family real estate companies and project developers. In addition, Michael has previously served as the manager of energy, environment, health, and safety for Pitney Bowes, and worked in management consulting for several domestic and international clients. He began his career at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), working on both hazardous waste remediation and international environmental development. As a recognized thought leader, Michael has lectured at Cornell and Columbia Universities graduate and business schools, and energy, sustainability and real estate conferences in Israel, India, and across the U.S.. These opportunities have allowed him both to learn and share his subject matter expertise and insights covering areas such as Cleantech, Proptech, Healthtech, finance, ESG, and decarbonization. Michael holds a BS in agricultural engineering, an MS in environmental engineering from Cornell University, and an MBA from the University of Connecticut. He serves on the City of White Plains Sustainability Committee, and is a licensed Professional Engineer, Certified Energy Manager, and Certified Energy Auditor.

S. Mitra Kalita

TIME Magazine / Charter

S. Mitra Kalita is a veteran journalist, media executive, prolific commentator and author of two books. Once described as “wonderfully blunt” by CNN anchor Brian Stelter, she is a change agent, loves writing headlines and framing stories, and blends digital strategy and audience-centric approaches while advocating for diversity and better management of our newsrooms. During Twitter debates on the definition of journalism (objectivity, view from nowhere, both sides!), Mitra prefers to spend her time committing it. Recently, she launched Epicenter-NYC, a newsletter to help New Yorkers get through the pandemic. Mitra has also recently co-founded a new media company called URL Media, a network of Black and Brown owned media organizations that share content, distribution and revenues to increase their long-term sustainability. She's on the board of the Philadelphia Inquirer and writes a weekly column for TIME. Mitra was most recently SVP at CNN Digital, overseeing the national news, breaking news, programming, opinion and features teams. She led the launch of Live Story, a tool that helps audiences follow stories in real time. Her philosophy on the “arc of a story” has been cited and emulated in news outlets across the country. Mitra has been a board member and visiting faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, teaching in its women’s academy, program for journalists of color and a seminar for new managers. She teaches in the accelerator program of the Online News Association. She’s been an adjunct at Columbia Journalism School, St. John’s University, CUNY Journalism School and UMass-Amherst. She was previously managing editor for editorial strategy at the Los Angeles Times. During her year there, she helped latimes.com traffic soar to nearly 60 million uniques monthly, innovated new forms of storytelling and audience engagement, and connected the Times to new communities via events, new beats, translations and partnerships. Oh, and the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the attacks on San Bernardino. She served as the executive editor (at large) for Quartz, Atlantic Media’s global economy site, and was its founding ideas editor. She also oversaw the launches of Quartz India and Quartz Africa. She worked previously at the Wall Street Journal, where she directed coverage of the Great Recession, launched a local news section for New York City and reported on the housing crisis as a senior writer. She was a founding editor of Mint, a business paper in New Delhi, and has previously worked for the Washington Post, Newsday and the Associated Press. She is the author of two books related to migration and globalization, including the highly acclaimed “Suburban Sahibs,” and speaks seven languages (but only four of them half decently). She previously served as president of the South Asian Journalists Association. Born in Brooklyn, Mitra was raised in Long Island, Puerto Rico and New Jersey—with regular trips to her grandparents’ villages in Assam, India. Jackson Heights has been home, on and off, for the last 20 years. She is married to the artist Nitin Mukul and they have two daughters and one mutt. She tweets @mitrakalita.

Diana Olick

CNBC

Diana Olick is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, currently serving as CNBC’s senior climate and real estate correspondent. She also contributes her climate and real estate expertise to NBC News NOW, MSNBC, NBC’s “Today” and “NBC Nightly News.” She is a regular guest speaker and does guest segments on NPR and C-SPAN. Her work on CNBC.com won the Gracie Award for “Outstanding Blog” in 2015. Soon after joining CNBC in 2002, Olick recognized the quick run-up in the housing market, fueled by investor flipping, and consequently launched the network’s real estate beat. She covers both commercial and residential real estate as well as the mortgage market. Olick was at the forefront of reporting on the housing boom, the subprime mortgage collapse, the resulting housing crash and the ongoing recovery. She also launched the real estate page on CNBC.com and is its primary author. In 2018, Olick envisioned a new series for the network called “Rising Risks,” which examines all aspects of the growing risk to real estate from climate change. The series grew beyond real estate and in 2021, Olick began covering climate full-time across all sectors. That same year, she covered the COP26 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, reporting on government, corporate and private sector investments in the fight against climate change. In early 2022, Olick launched an additional climate series, Clean Start, which follows venture capital money into climate startups. The series airs weekly and has its own page on CNBC.com/clean-start. Prior to joining CNBC, Olick spent seven years as a correspondent for CBS News. Olick began her career as a local news reporter at WABI-TV in Bangor, Maine; WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and KIRO-TV in Seattle. She joined CBS in 1994 as a New York-based correspondent for the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” and “The Early Show.” She also contributed pieces to “48 Hours” and “Sunday Morning.“ At CBS, Olick worked in the New York, Dallas and Washington, D.C. bureaus, covering such stories as the World Trade Center conspiracy trial, the crash of TWA Flight 800, the JonBenet Ramsey murder mystery and was the exclusive correspondent for the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols. She also took a temporary assignment in CBS’ Moscow bureau, where she chronicled the brief presidential campaign of Mikhail Gorbachev. Olick has a B.A. in comparative literature with a minor in soviet studies from Columbia College and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Follow Diana Olick on X @DianaOlick on Instagram @DianaOlick and on Linkedin.

Jonathan Scott

Scott Brothers Global

Drew and Jonathan Scott ( Property Brothers, Celebrity IOU, Brother vs. Brother, Backed By The Bros ) are multifaceted entrepreneurs and home transformation television and lifestyle personalities with over 9.5 billion all - time hours viewed of their hit TV shows in the U.S. alone. By helping families reimagine their homes, Drew and Jonathan have amassed massive omnichannel reach and connect with a highly engaged fanbase of over 21 million social followers across all platforms. They are the co - founders and CE Os of Scott Brothers Global , a leading lifestyle brand, and Scott Brothers Entert ainment , an award - winning entertainment production company that produces hundreds of hours of unscripted lifestyle content for major networks around the world. Their multi - category home furnishing and improvement brands, Scott Living and Drew & Jonathan Home , are sold in re tail outlets across North America and on major e - commerce platforms. Drew and Jonathan’s shows are watched in over 160 countries and in the United States, and they are ranked among HGTV’s top talent, filming a total of over 500 episodes for the network – a n unprecedented milestone for a host in their genre. Drew and Jonathan were named on Variety’s inaugural Lifestyle Leaders Impact List in 2022, are frequently featured in Variety’s annual reality impact report highlighting the titans of unscripted programm ing and were included on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2022 list of most powerful producers in unscripted TV . Having renovated over 900 homes during their careers, the brothers are changemakers and philanthropists advocating for affordable housing, clean energy , and happy and healthy homes. They serve as ambassadors for Habitat for Humanity as Global Habitat Humanitarians — the international housing organization’s highest honor. In 2020, they produced their first - ever documentary , Jonathan Scott’s Power Trip , which investigates renewable energy and the struggle to make it more available to families across the United States. Through a new partnership with GroundBreak Ventures, Drew and Jonathan will support the best emerging technologies in real estate and hom e innovation via their Healthy Home Innovation Fund to accelerate change among professionals and homeowners alike.

Drew Scott

Scott Brothers Global

Drew and Jonathan Scott ( Property Brothers, Celebrity IOU, Brother vs. Brother, Backed By The Bros ) are multifaceted entrepreneurs and home transformation television and lifestyle personalities with over 9.5 billion all - time hours viewed of their hit TV shows in the U.S. alone. By helping families reimagine their homes, Drew and Jonathan have amassed massive omnichannel reach and connect with a highly engaged fanbase of over 21 million social followers across all platforms. They are the co - founders and CE Os of Scott Brothers Global , a leading lifestyle brand, and Scott Brothers Entert ainment , an award - winning entertainment production company that produces hundreds of hours of unscripted lifestyle content for major networks around the world. Their multi - category home furnishing and improvement brands, Scott Living and Drew & Jonathan Home , are sold in re tail outlets across North America and on major e - commerce platforms. Drew and Jonathan’s shows are watched in over 160 countries and in the United States, and they are ranked among HGTV’s top talent, filming a total of over 500 episodes for the network – a n unprecedented milestone for a host in their genre. Drew and Jonathan were named on Variety’s inaugural Lifestyle Leaders Impact List in 2022, are frequently featured in Variety’s annual reality impact report highlighting the titans of unscripted programm ing and were included on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2022 list of most powerful producers in unscripted TV . Having renovated over 900 homes during their careers, the brothers are changemakers and philanthropists advocating for affordable housing, clean energy , and happy and healthy homes. They serve as ambassadors for Habitat for Humanity as Global Habitat Humanitarians — the international housing organization’s highest honor. In 2020, they produced their first - ever documentary , Jonathan Scott’s Power Trip , which investigates renewable energy and the struggle to make it more available to families across the United States. Through a new partnership with GroundBreak Ventures, Drew and Jonathan will support the best emerging technologies in real estate and hom e innovation via their Healthy Home Innovation Fund to accelerate change among professionals and homeowners alike.

Andrew Staniforth

Assembly OSM

Andrew Staniforth is CEO of Assembly OSM and a leader in the NYC development landscape. Over the last decade, he has worked on over $4B of residential, office, and mixed-use development projects in NYC and Toronto. As CEO of Assembly, Andrew partnered with the principals at SHoP Architects to spin out the company as a standalone venture-backed business with the mission of making urban development more scalable and sustainable. In 2022, he raised $50M from major investors like Fifth Wall, Jefferies, Lendlease, and Mercury to scale up the company and transition from the technical R&D phase to real-world project execution. Today, Assembly has completed its first project in NYC and is working on its second Passive House high-rise in NYC, demonstrating Assembly's ability to drive change in sustainable urban housing development. Before his tenure at Assembly, Andrew was involved in key urban development initiatives. At L&L Holding Company, he was a Principal focused on office development, and led the redevelopment of the $2B Terminal Warehouse in NYC. This project required careful navigation through one of the largest NYC Landmarks hearings and raising debt and equity from partners like J.P. Morgan, Calstrs, Allianz, Goldman Sachs, and Blackstone. Before L&L, Andrew was at Sidewalk Labs, a Google/Alphabet company, where he led development feasibility analysis of the largest smart city in the world – focusing on creating a mixed-income neighborhood powered by the latest technology. The foundation of Andrew’s career was built at Forest City Ratner Companies, under the mentorship of MaryAnne Gilmartin and Bruce Ratner. His involvement in projects like the Barclays Center, Nassau Coliseum, and the development of 461 Dean Street, North America's largest modular tower, were instrumental in learning how to navigate the most complex projects from a technical, political, and financial perspective. Beyond his professional roles, Andrew's background as a mixed-race, LGBT, first-generation American brings a unique perspective to his work. His education at the University of Pennsylvania in real estate, finance, and computer science has further equipped him to address the complexities of urban development, bringing tech into real estate. Andrew continues to be a dedicated leader in urban development, focused on innovative/sustainable solutions for city living.

2024 Speakers