Joe Bassil

Joe was also chosen to participate in the inaugural Fred Fugazzi Senior Bowl for exceptional Brooklyn and Staten Island football seniors where he played every interior offensive line position during the match up. Joe was honored as New York City’s top scholar athlete in 1979 by the Touchdown Club of America along with President Gerald Ford. He graduated top 10% in his class, was a member of ARISTA National Honor Society and served as the President of the Student Government Organization. Upon graduation from Brooklyn Tech, Joe received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He played football for 4 years for the Army Team, a major Independent predominately playing a Big East Football schedule. He travelled with the Varsity for 4 years and lettered his junior and senior year. He was awarded All East Honorable Mention his senior year. Joe graduated from West Point in 1983 with a degree in Engineering and a minor in Quantitative Management, receiving a Presidential Commission in the US Army. He was an Aviation Officer and served in both command and staff positions in the 503rd Attack Helicopter Battalion in Germany under V Corp Commander, General Colin Powell.

Joe has an MBA and Masters in Real Estate Finance. He has been a Property Investment Banking Professional throughout his 30 plus year career on Wall Street. He simultaneously attained Managing Director and Group Head responsibility along with real estate balance sheet principal and Security Principal duties in three global financial institutions. Joe was at the forefront and was instrumental in ushering the conversion of private ownership of real estate into public entities while arranging and directly providing ongoing capital needs to said entities. His efforts and methods were foundational to unsecured bank lending and public bond market issuance for public real estate issuers. Joe was also at the forefront of the securitization of commercial real estate mortgage debt and successfully concluded a number of high-profile merger and acquisition advisory mandates. Direct responsibility for risk capital transaction closings, capital markets placement executions and advisory mandates have well exceeded $350 billion throughout his career. Joe was a Founding Board Member and a former President of the Real Estate Lenders Association, a former Board of Governor with ex officio duties and a former Vice President of the West Point Society of New York, an active Board Member and Vice Chairman of the St. Nicholas Home for the Aged, and a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher.

He has a beautiful, capable and productive wife named Monda and two wonderful adult sons named Gabriel and Jacob.