Vida Advisory Board

Well known for being an aggressive, creative, and experienced litigator, Sean Andrade is often called upon to handle the most sensitive, critical, and complex of matters. For the nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Sean played a critical role in defending LAUSD through its most difficult chapter, successfully resolving an unprecedented number of extremely complex and high-profile multi-plaintiff tort matters. Sean also led the subsequent insurance recovery efforts, fighting the world’s largest insurers for more than $300 million in insurance coverage in multiple high-stakes matters.
 
Sean has also helped numerous other clients achieve victories in cases involving breach of contract, fraud, intellectual property and real estate disputes, products liability, employment discrimination, wage and hour, and entertainment disputes.
 
Sean is also active in the community. He is a Board Member (2021-2023) of the California Minority Counsel Program, and Co-Chairs the Law Firm Cross Marketing Committee for the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. Locally, he served three terms on the Board for the Mexican American Bar Association (as Trustee and Secretary), and supports numerous youth and community-focused non-profit organizations.
 

Jack R. Cline, Jr., along with his partners, has more than 35 years of firsthand knowledge of B quality buildings. He owns/has owned properties in partnerships exceeding 1,000,000 square feet. He has executed sales/leasebacks, leased investments, landlord and tenant representation assignments, land developments, build-to-suits, redevelopment agency work, eminent domain action defenses, foreclosure sales, short sales, bankruptcy sales, and partnership partitions. Jack has developed a strong working knowledge of environmental, legal, and tax matters affecting real property disposition. His integrity has enabled him to work with brokers from all brokerage companies and agencies. Jack’s geographic focus has been industrial real estate from the Greater Los Angeles area to the Inland Empire for the last 35 years. He has extensive knowledge and experience working with specialized industries from textile, food processing, transportation, and logistics and has worked with most of the local Class B and C industrial property investors. Jack maintains a thriving, inbound referral business based on his long-term efforts in the market and the trust instilled in him by competing agents.
 
In 1996, Jack, along with two others, founded the Lee & Associates® office in the City of Commerce and co-managed the office for 5 years, overseeing the office’s growth from a startup to a market leader in terms of transaction volume, number of brokers, and square feet listed.
 
Founded in 1979, Lee & Associates® Commercial Real Estate Services is the largest regional commercial brokerage firm in the West. Lee & Associates® has offices throughout Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Riverside Counties.
 

Mr. Natham has extensive experience in managing CPA firms, performing audits (public and private companies), reviews, and compilations. For more than 25 years, has guided corporations through complex audits, restructurings, international expansion and capital markets transactions. Strong SEC expertise and background in mergers and acquisitions, knowledgeable of SOX requirements. Proven expertise in reporting / auditing standards and generally accepted accounting principles, including employee benefit plan accounting (DOL requirements) and financial statement specifics.

Extensive experience with a variety of accountants’ reports and financial statements, including participating/leading on-site peer review/internal inspection teams. Proven leader with a track record of excellent organizational, communication and interpersonal skills.

He is currently Director of Assurance at HKG, LLP in Pasadena, CA.
 

Pedro is the CEO and Founder of Somar Capital Management, a global long/short equities firm focusing on discovering emerging businesses that sustainably provide customers a significantly superior value proposition and are still materially underpenetrated in their market opportunity. Mr. Ramos employs a rigorous investment process in which he conducts an in-depth analysis of organization strength and incentives, including management track record, corporate governance, management incentives and capital stewardship. As part of Somar’s proprietary investment process, Mr. Ramos also analyzes the entire ecosystem of a potential investment, including private market competitors, suppliers, and customers to fully understand the market opportunity and potential risks. 

Prior to starting Somar, Mr. Ramos was a Managing Director of Tremblant Capital from 2007 through 2015, during which time he oversaw the investment of a portion of Tremblant’s assets under management. Prior to Tremblant, Mr. Ramos was a Vice-President, Private Equity at Kildare Enterprises from 2006 to 2007, where he negotiated and closed two private equity acquisitions and led a lean manufacturing initiative, saving a portfolio company a material portion of its labor costs. Before his tenure in private equity, Mr. Ramos was a Junior Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company in London from 2004 to 2006 and a Consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in Lisbon and Madrid from 2000 to 2002. He led a European engagement team at McKinsey evaluating the acquisitions of a major European retailer. At BCG he estimated the cost-synergies for a significant pan-European merger. Mr. Ramos started his career at Banco Portugues de Investimento, Portugal, as an Investment Banker from 1998 to 2000, where he focused on M&A and debt and equity financing for clients in TMT, industrials, tourism and real estate. Mr. Ramos received an MBA with High Distinction, Baker Scholar, from Harvard Business School in 2004 and his degree in Economics, coming in first in class, from the Economics School of Universidade do Porto, Porto.