Bios & Case Studies
Bios & Case Studies
Our past work experiences span top tier firms within our respective industry to small curated teams. We have substantial combined international experience working abroad, living abroad and traveling to more than 60 countries that has shaped our global and local perspective.
John Heffington
John is a founder of Open Six and a Vice President in the retail services group of CBRE in Austin, Texas. He specializes in tenant representation for retail and restaurants. John represents a long list of tenants in the Austin market including Fox Restaurant Concepts, sweetgreen, Mendicino Farms, Chilantro, Finley's Barber Shop and Steel City Pops. In addition, he represents AMLI on their downtown assets and Stratus in Southwest Austin. John is especially strong in national high street brands looking to expand into Austin.
Prior to joining CBRE, John worked for Trammell Crow Company where he underwrote, developed, leased, and disposed of various projects in Austin. Prior to Trammell Crow Company, he was part of the financial leadership program at Union Pacific and prior to business school he was a structural engineer by education and occupation. John holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a Masters in Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas. He also holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University. |
Ann Schwartz Heffington
Ann is a founder of Open Six and pursues projects on her own as well as with other partnerships. She specializes in business improvement and strategically collaborates with others to bring the right set of skills, experience and horsepower to a given challenge.
Prior to founding Open Six, Ann was a Managing Director for The Marchbanks Company (and still collaborates with them). Previously, Ann held business development and executive branding positions for a global luxury hotel brand as well as a full-service hotel brand with Carlson Companies in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is extensively trained in the luxury travel sector understanding consumer needs and their respective product and service levels. She has extended this expertise to localized independent and boutique hotel projects. During her Carlson tenure, she completed an IPO on the Swedish Stock Exchange and two divestitures with combined values over $1.5 billion. Ann began her career with Booz Allen Hamilton (now Strategy&) as a business strategy consultant, advising numerous Fortune 500 clients. Prior to graduate school, she joined the Transportation Security Administration in Washington, D.C. as it was forming and shaped airport security implementation at several of the largest airports in the country. During her career, Ann has worked abroad on assignments in Finland, Germany, and Belgium. Ann holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She holds three undergraduate degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. BBA - Business Honors, BBA – Marketing, BA – German. |
Case Studies
Ownership advisory for local hospitality projects, raw land to conceptualization and finished services and products.
Nation-wide roll out of high growth quick casual restaurant concept. Re-positioning of innovative, physical rehabilitation hospital company. Value-add play from raw land to for-sale physically built product. Developed, wrote and won proposal for 4 acre downtown site from raw land to conceptual to ground-up reality. Advised publicly-held Board on investment strategy for $250-400M annual placement. Turnaround strategy for luxury travel services and publications company. Turnaround of local hospitality club. Investment review of over 100 hospitality projects and business opportunities. Portfolio review of over 1,000 global hospitality assets. |