Juan Saldaña III – Chair
Founder & Managing Principal, P3 Markets, LLC

Profile

Juan Saldana is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator with a passion for real estate and entrepreneurship. Currently, he serves as the Founder and Managing Principal of P3 Markets, LLC, a position he’s held since February 2018. At P3 he co-developed a 100MM mixed-use/mixed-income commercial/retail property that includes 50% affordable housing, and leads efforts with TIF, acquisition, project investment, community equity RDA, WBE/MBE procurement opportunities, local ownership/leasing, and project management.

Juan is also the developer of Xquina Cafe, an impact investment in real estate with the Foundation of Little Village responsible for delivering 11K of commercial retail, office, and shared office space with 5MM budget. He is also the Technical Assistance provider to the City of Chicago Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and provides owner-representative services to 15 companies that represent 12MM of local investment

Before P3 Markets, Juan co-founded and designed Food Hero, L3C, Where he managed a cross-functional team of software vendors and an internal team to deliver a blended learning digital training platform (LMS) for restaurant and consumer packaged goods entrepreneurs and food service managers. Additionally, he collaborated with the National Restaurant Association to develop a national competency model of non-traditional education for industry workforce/students.

As a Business Counselor and Innovation Strategist at SBDC/IHCC/WBDC, Juan coached 200 innovators and led them to implement company-wide systems change through SCRUM, Design Thinking, and waterfall methodologies for different stages of the business cycle. He also designed a continuous improvement start-up accelerator model in partnership with expert business coaches at 1871 for actionable KPIs and analytics designed to increase the client base by 20%.

From November 2006 to October 2012, Juan founded and managed LeadRock LLC, where he became a national expert in real estate public-private partnerships. Juan spearheaded collaborations between public institutions and private developers/REIT’s regarding entitlements (PUD/Zoning/Special Use), tax credits/abatements, TIF (grants/bonds), and municipal bonds.