J. Antonio Prada joined the Los Angeles office of DSI in early 2008, after having recently received his Master of Business Administration, with a concentration in Finance and International Management, from the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business.
Mr. Prada’s prior experience demonstrates his leadership, analytical and negotiation skills. At Comstock Capital Partners, he led a $1 million intellectual property project from vision to funding. This project involved Mr. Prada’s meeting regularly with the license holder, creating a financial model and valuing projections, and negotiating a waterfall payout structure between management and capital partners.
Prior to attending business school, Mr. Prada worked for 8 years in the construction industry and held both operational and managerial positions. Working for both sub and general contractors, Mr. Prada has been involved in a wide variety of high profile projects in both private and public sectors.
At Proven Management, Inc., a San Francisco based general contractor, Mr. Prada was Project Manager for the expansion of San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center, a project built to house the annual eBay Live Convention. Because of budget and time constraints, this controversial project was closely watched by the media. Mr. Prada built and managed this turnkey project, controlling the schedule and managing the daily construction activities of 35 union field employees and five subcontractors. He directed the McEnery project to an on-time completion despite the addition of $1 million in contract work.
Mr. Prada also served as Lead Estimator for other public works projects at Proven Management, Inc. In that capacity, he led a team that was awarded more than $60 million in project contracts, analyzed profit and resource allocation, and developed and managed project budgets. As Project Engineer and OSHA Safety Representative, for a City of San Francisco Hetch Hetchy Watershed Project, Mr. Prada led safety meetings that contributed to a perfect zero accidents for 100 full-time employees.
Mr. Prada began his career with Joseph J. Albanese Inc., a large Bay Area concrete subcontractor. At Albanese, he had the opportunity to work with some of the most talented craftsmen and project managers, on Silicon Valley’s largest high tech campus projects.
Mr. Prada received his Business Administration degree in Marketing from the University of Phoenix and has completed all three levels of the Certified Turnaround Professional examination. He is also a member of the Turnaround Management Association and the American Bankruptcy Institute. While working on his Master of Business Administration, he studied abroad at, and played basketball for the college team of, Fundação Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
