Zahara Kassam

Zahara Kassam has close to 20 years of hands-on industry experience as a hotel real estate investor, asset manager and brand partner. Ms. Kassam applies this strategic, financial and operational background to assist clients with a wide variety of real estate bankruptcy, restructuring, litigation, valuation, transaction and asset management advisory engagements.

Ms. Kassam's recent experience at FTI Consulting includes advising the senior secured lenders of Carlson Wagonlit Travel; advising the unsecured creditors committee in the Times Square JV LLC Chapter 11 bankruptcy; advising the senior lenders in the foreclosure process of 20 Times Square and The Edition Times Square; and advising the junior mezzanine lender on a New York City hotel restructuring, as well as several confidential litigation and valuation advisory engagements.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Ms. Kassam was an independent hotel consultant to BentallGreenOak and HDG Hotels; an asset manager for TIAA/Nuveen's portfolio of parking assets; and the interim head of Real Estate Business Development at Industrious. Before that, Ms. Kassam launched and scaled Marathon Asset Management's European hotel real estate portfolio, which she grew to 20 hotels (~4,000 rooms). In this role, she turned around property performance by implementing revenue management and profit optimization strategies, as well as leading the refurbishment, rebranding and upscale repositioning of most of the portfolio.

Ms. Kassam also previously worked at InterContinental Hotels Group, assisting efforts to increase the distribution of IHG's brands across Europe by structuring and negotiating over 100 franchise, management, joint venture and M&A transactions. Ms. Kassam launched her career as an M&A analyst at Citigroup, after growing up as an instrumental contributor to the family hotel business in Florida.

Ms. Kassam sits on the Board of Directors for the Robert F. Toigo Alumni Endowment and serves as a real estate consultant for the Aga Khan Foundation USA.

Awards & Recognition:

• Influence Award, Gold: Rising Star, Commercial Property Executive (2022)
• Breakthrough Award, Women in Real Estate, Commercial Observer (2020)