Team

Tavner Highsmith
thighsmith@natstandard.com
770-551-5855

Tavner Highsmith is an Executive Director of National Standard Finance, LLC. He has extensive commercial real estate lending and capital markets experience ranging from construction lending to sale-leaseback transactions. Prior to National Standard Finance, Mr. Highsmith was a Director at Bond Street Capital, as well as Credit Sovereign, where he was responsible for originating and closing commercial real estate financings, build-to-suit and sale-leaseback transactions. Since co-founding National Standard, Mr. Highsmith oversees investor relations and is our Chief Investment Officer, which includes being a member of our investment committee.

Jan Petrenko
jpetrenko@natstandard.com
530-863-0598

Jan Petrenko is a Managing Director as well as manages all west coast new investments of National Standard Finance, LLC a leading public private investment firm active in Public Private Partnerships for municipalities, energy and healthcare sectors. Mr. Petrenko brings a substantial wealth of experience, knowledge and relationships to National Standard after a successful track record in the municipal/public finance industry, where he originated in excess of $2 billion dollars of transactions, as well as significant experience in renewable energy and infrastructure project financings. Prior to National Standard Mr. Petrenko was a Managing Director of an international merchant bank focusing on energy and project finance and just prior was Vice President of a San Francisco based municipal securities firm. Jan has worked on complex fixed income transactions in many facets of the investment banking and public finance sector and has built institutional relationships domestically and abroad. Jan holds his Series 6, 7, and 63 licenses from the securities governing body and is the President of a local Not-for-Profit in his community.

Larry Burden
lburden@natstandard.com
330-666-9707

Larry Burden's real estate financial experience includes his role as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Freddie Mac, where he was directly involved in the underwriting, purchasing, servicing and securitization of tens of billions of dollars in large multi-family and other transactions with commercial banks and Wall Street firms. In the hospital and healthcare sector, he has raised institutional and private capital and establishes sales alliances and sales channels for corporate growth and real estate needs. These efforts included establishing alliances with leading hospital associations and hospital and surgical center design and construction firms. Mr. Burden is a Director and founder of Health Forecasts, a provider of hospital planning and expansion services.

Russell Duke
rduke@natstandard.com
770-551-8770

Russell Duke brings a diverse background of experience and knowledge to National Standard Finance, LLC and its clients. Mr. Duke has in-depth experience in debt and equity project financings, complex investment banking and structured finance transactions. Mr. Duke has been the lead investment banker and/or a Principal on large scale international projects and has created international exposure due to his accomplishments and efforts in infrastructure and project finance and ability to provide capital as an investment banker. His direct investment banking and finance career includes transaction experience in providing and/or advising on both debt and equity to domestic and foreign companies, as well as government agencies, totaling financial commitments of over USD $3,000,000,000 during his banking career.

Jerrold Carrington, J.D.
jcarrington@natstandard.com
312-286-1300

Jerrold Carrington is a Managing Director of National Standard Finance, LLC and manages the firm's Chicago office. Mr. Carrington is a 21 year private equity investor with a demonstrated history of working with growth companies. He is also Deputy Executive Director for the Chicago/Gary Regional Airport Authority, which oversees the Gary Chicago International Airport, Midway and O'Hare Airports. Mr. Carrington was the CEO and co-founder of SCAH Investments, LLC, the Manager for Prequel, LLC, a $25 million real estate private equity fund (leveraged) that invested in distressed residential real estate in Southern California. Over the past 20 years, Mr. Carrington has made 31 investments, excluding real estate, totaling over $1 billion across a wide variety of industries and has served on the Board of Directors of seven private companies.

Donald Kaplan
dkaplan@natstandard.com
703-960-3138

Don Kaplan joined National Standard after an extensive 25+ year career in healthcare finance and government. Prior to National Standard, Mr. Kaplan held various positions at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, including Director, Office of Multifamily Housing Management, FHA, where Mr. Kaplan was Principal HUD official responsible for administering the loan servicing and asset management of HUD's multifamily housing portfolio, consisting of 22,000 projects, comprising of 2.5 million units and valued at $50 billion. Mr. Kaplan later became Director/Deputy Director, Office of Insured Health Care Facilities, leading HUD's national hospital mortgage financing program including: loan servicing and asset management of a $5 billion hospital portfolio; development and processing of 25 HUD financed new hospitals totaling over $1.7 billion; development of hospital analysis, processing and monitoring systems; development of hospital risk mitigation policy and oversight system to complement OMB's credit subsidy budget initiatives.

John McCulloch, MHSA
jmcculloch@natstandard.com
303-995-1300

John McCulloch is a graduate of the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business and the George Washington University with a Masters degree in Healthcare Administration. As a former hospital administrator, John brings over 25 years of experience in the healthcare and real estate industries. He brings his invaluable experience working internally with physicians, administrators and decision makers in the medical community. John was a former Principal of a healthcare real estate firm that acquired and managed over $63 million in medical office properties.

James Highsmith
jhighsmith@natstandard.com
770-551-7511

James Highsmith is a Managing Director of National Standard Finance. Prior to joining National Standard, he was President and CEO of Imperial Finance and Business Solutions, specializing in commercial real estate financing. He founded the company in 2001, and his firm has successfully completed hundreds of real estate transactions that range from ground-up construction, bridge loans and stabilized income producing properties. Mr. Highsmith is responsible for underwriting and due diligence for all new investments at National Standard Finance.

Hugo Barreca, Esq.
hbarreca@natstandard.com
212-627-1430

Mr. Barreca is a financial and legal specialist focusing on financial planning, contract and deal negotiation, and legal affairs. His corporate experience includes senior positions with Time Inc., The New York Times, Knowledge Strategies Internet Group and Proclivity Systems, Inc. He has held the CFO position in two publicly traded companies as well as in several privately held companies. He has been involved in the structuring of complex business arrangements, advising on company formation, stock plans, business plans, financial forecasts, loans and equity investments. He is the co-author two books, "The Entrepreneur's Internet Handbook",  now in its second printing, and "The Business Owner's Guide to the Internet."

MyungKeun Oh
moh@natstandard.com
(82) 10 2057 2845

MyungKeun Oh is responsible for business development and transaction management in South Korea and surrounding regions. During Mr. Oh's career he has been actively involved in project management, planning, consulting as well as raising capital for mid to large scale infrastructure projects in Korea, Southeast Asia, Africa and Russia. Mr. Oh operates full time from his location in South Korea and reports directly to the senior management.

Roger Bergren
rbergren@natstandard.com
770-551-8149

Roger Bergren is a Senior Vice President with National Standard Finance and has more than 40 years of experience in management, marketing, real estate and banking. After a lengthy corporate career with Brunswick, Mr. Bergren most recently was employed by a regional commercial bank in the capacity of investor relations and reporting to the Chairman directly. Mr. Bergren focuses his efforts at National Standard on business development and corporate relations.

Michael Comparato
mcomparato@natstandard.com
312-376-3820

Michael A. Comparato is responsible for turn-key project delivery and construction program management of National Standard’s Public/Private projects and serves as President, CEO of Vieste, LLC. Mr. Comparato has served as owner’s representative/program manager for both public and private sector clients on capital projects with an aggregate value exceeding $5 billion. He has planned, financed, developed and/or managed over $1 billion of real estate. He has successfully engineered financial transactions in both for-profit and non-profit communities, utilizing a variety of debt/equity vehicles, including closed-end investment funds, real estate investment trusts, equity syndications, tax-exempt bond issues, pension funds and institutional lending sources. Mr. Comparato also has extensive experience in corporate mergers, acquisitions and asset management.

Paul L. Anderson
panderson@natstandard.com
303-635-0200

Paul Anderson brings over 35 years of real estate development and investment banking experience to National Standard. Mr. Anderson is the Founder and President of Anderson Resource Partners, Inc., a boutique real estate investment banking corporation located in Denver, CO. Founded in 1984, the firm has represented buyers, sellers, lenders and equity providers in the structured finance of transactions nationally. Mr. Anderson has assisted in transactions exceeding $1 billion involving all property sectors. The firm has also been actively involved in real estate development activities regarding multifamily projects in Colorado and the mountain resort industry. Mr. Anderson began his professional career in senior management positions in the early-stage planning and development of three large-scale resort projects in Colorado – Copper Mountain, Breckenridge and Keystone. He has performed as a principal or consultant in acquisition activity involving numerous mountain resort developments throughout the western states and continues to be active in the industry.