Paul B. Draper -- President/CEO
Paul is Founder and President/CEO of Centerra Capital. Paul has over 25 years of management experience with small and mid-size companies and serves as a Director or Advisor for several private companies.
Paul started Centerra Capital in 1998 and since then has managed a number of corporate finance and real estate investment and advisory transactions. Notably, as Asset Manager for a large hotel portfolio, Paul and the Centerra team successfully engineered a sale to a joint venture between a major Wall Street private equity fund and a large hotel operating company.
Other significant transactions included providing financial analysis and advisory services to a seller of a large development parcel and managing the acquisition and on-going asset/property management of over $200 million of real estate assets.
Paul initiated the purchase, development and on-going management of 1020 Tenth Street, a 32,000 sf Class A office building which was part of a major re-development effort in downtown Modesto and he represented the buyer in the acquisition of a branded restaurant chain; and was the lead investor in the recent acquisition of a 132,000 sf Class A Medical Office Building in Modesto, CA.
Prior to starting Centerra Capital, Paul served as Vice-President of Retail and Institutional Development for PTI Securities, a specialty investment management firm. He was also a partner in a joint venture with a major food processor seeking entry into the California nut industry for purposes of developing worldwide supply capability. Paul was involved in introducing two new technologies to California agriculture-data processing at the enterprise level in the mid 1970s and drip irrigation in the early 1980s.
Paul is a lifelong resident of Stanislaus County in California, is active in the local community and has served on numerous boards and committees. Paul is a member of the Board of Trustees of Sutter Gould Medical Foundation and a Trustee of the Gallo Center for the Arts.
Paul graduated with honors from the University of California, Davis in Agricultural Economics and Business Management and holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Harvard University.