M. LISA SHASTEEN, ESQ. Lisa is co-qualifying broker and President of The Shasteen-Sizemore Co. She began her career as an attorney working for the national law firms of Foley & Lardner and Rudnick and Wolfe in general litigation and transactions, including workouts and foreclosures, real estate acquisitions and development, zoning and land use matters, public and private financing facilities, title work and commercial leasing. In 1996, she founded her own law firm through which she represented a number of nationally recognized developers, as well as Aerial Communications, which is now known as T-Mobile, for whom she managed the real estate and legal aspects of the wireless telephone system buildout within the State of Florida. Her clients also included Communications Equity Associates (“CEA”), an international investment and merchant bank with 17 offices throughout the world and over $1 billion under management focused on broadcast television, telecommunications and outdoor properties.
Eventually, Lisa joined CEA and became its Senior Vice President and General Counsel. There, she managed legal affairs world-wide for the company and its affiliates and became part of its business development team. In that position, among other things, she helped establish a fund for investment in underperforming financial assets secured by mortgages as well as other funds geographically focused within specific parts of the globe to purchase broadcast and technology companies. While there, she was also a Director of the International Institute of Communication in London, an organization comprised of corporate, governmental and academic members working in communication and business development sectors throughout the world.
Lisa re-established her own law firm, M. Lisa Shasteen, P.A., in Tampa after leaving CEA and also founded the real estate brokerage company which is now The Shasteen-Sizemore Co. Her work in real estate has included work for several commercial and residential tract owners and developers, as well as work with individual contractors and homeowners. Among other things, in 2004, Lisa was responsible for a record-setting transaction for Pinellas County, Florida, involving the sale of a significant group of beachfront hospitality properties for a seller she continues to represent in connection with the acquisition and restoration of The Floridan Hotel, an historic high-rise hotel in downtown Tampa which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel is one of the most beloved structures in the Tampa Bay Area, and was vacant for 30 years. In addition to managing a related real estate assemblage and legal work for that project, Lisa is its spokeswoman.
In addition to acting as managing broker and chief strategist for The Shasteen-Sizemore Co., Lisa has sat on the Board of Directors of the Florida Association of Realtors. For two terms, she chaired the Realtor/Attorney Committee for the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, an association with approximately 9,000 members at the time, where she designed and implemented a Spanish language legal education initiative and attracted the sponsorship of, among others, The Florida Bar and Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund for two of the association’s most successful annual educational events, which also qualified for continuing education credits for attorneys and, for the first time, Realtors. Lisa is a past Director for the Bay Area Real Estate Council. To facilitate her company’s international initiative, Lisa obtained certification from ICREA as a Transnational Referral Consultant and is a member of the U.S. chapter of the International Federation of Real Estate Brokers based in Paris, France (FIABCI). She is currently a member of the American Committee on Foreign Relations.
Lisa’s charitable endeavors include acting as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Akilah Institute for Women, a hospitality management school for women based in Kigali, Rwanda. She is focused on education, acting for years as a subject matter expert for the State of Florida in real estate testing and has worked in the same capacity for Pearson Vue, the developer of a national real estate exam accepted by most states. She has authored and presented many articles, including an analysis of the use of technology to alter an economic base presented in Kuala Lumpur to a full meeting of the International Institute of Communications. More recently, she was hired as a consultant for St. Petersburg College to design and teach an innovative reality-based series of real estate business courses or track for its business school students.
Lisa’s passion is helping others develop their vision and potential.
JENNIFER L. SIZEMORE
Jennifer is co-qualifying broker and the Executive Vice-President of The Shasteen-Sizemore Co., where she implements the company’s day-to-day operations. She is also a licensed mortgage broker. Jennifer graduated from the University of South Florida where she earned a double Bachelor of Sciences in Finance and Marketing and a minor in Public Relations. Her background in agribusiness plays an essential role in the company’s expansion into the more critical markets within Florida’s interior. Jennifer’s family has been farming within Florida in the Plant City area since the late 1800′s. In the 1990′s Jennifer’s immediate family expanded operations into the Wimauma area, where they operate over 1,000 acres of farmland as well as an international packing and shipping facility. The family grows and packs a variety of citrus, berries, cantaloupes and ornamental plants and distributes these products throughout the United States and Canada, shipping an average of one million flats of berries per year.
Prior to joining The Shasteen-Sizemore Co. in 2005, Jennifer managed agricultural crop production, sales and marketing, interfacing with landowners and others within the wholesale distribution chain. She played a key role in the family’s ongoing land acquisitions and also participated in the development of The Villas, a ground-breaking migrant worker community consisting of 72 three and four-bedroom homes partially funded by Hillsborough County, as well as an associated model daycare center operated by a non-profit organization. Jennifer is also a trans-national referral specialist. Disciplined in her approach to management and client representation, she remains one of the firm’s top producers while managing daily operations.
Jennifer was recognized by the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors as the 2006 Rookie of the Year for her contributions to the real estate profession, to her clients, to others in the community, and because of her fundamental approach to real estate as a business.
