Recap: Aaron DeMayo on the Young Leaders Panel at the 2026 ULI Fall Meeting
On Tuesday, October 27, I spoke at the 2026 ULI Fall Meeting in Miami Beach on "Young Leaders, Big Impact: Shaping Real Estate's Next Chapter." Cory Yeffet, Principal at Integra Investments, joined me on stage, with Rachael Price, Development Manager at DiGeronimo Companies, moderating. Thank you to everyone who came out.
The session was presented with ULI Southeast Florida/Caribbean, the district council that named me its 2025 Young Leader of the Year. Speaking in my hometown made it especially meaningful.
Our conversation centered on a few big questions. Here are a couple of the answers worth highlighting.
What excites me right now?
What excites me most is the momentum of plans becoming reality. The Northeast Corridor commuter rail secured the final piece of its funding the week before the session, and Carnegie Mellon is coming to town.
That growth brings its own challenges, along with new ideas, capital, and people to help with the ones we already face. Handled well, we can take on both together.
What challenges are we facing, and how are we addressing them?
The numbers come first: land costs, construction costs in some segments and product types, and stabilizing rents. Infrastructure is the other big one.
Two tools can help close those gaps. Public-private partnerships let the public and private sectors share the cost of the infrastructure a growing city needs. Public benefits programs, which trade bonus development capacity for public improvements, can let private projects deliver more of that infrastructure on site.
This is where our work at Future Vision Studios comes in. Our zoning and feasibility studies show early which sites can carry those costs. From there, we design for the density and attainability Miami needs, with room for better streets, tree canopy, and open space.
The session also fell on a morning of historic flooding across South Florida. We're known for blue skies, days on the beach, and an outdoor lifestyle on the sand and the bay. Like any place, South Florida also comes with real weather and climate challenges, and that morning made them hard to miss.
The day before, ULI's Lewis Center Sustainability Forum brought together a full day of speakers focused on coastal resilience, with Miami Beach as the case study. The challenges here are very real, and so is the work underway. Our region is being realistic and proactive about understanding these risks and addressing them, and progress is being made.
So I tied it into this answer. The cities that thrive this century are proactive. They collect data, analyze honestly, and chart a realistic path forward with bold, comprehensive solutions and surgical interventions. Smart capital will go to the places that tackle complexity head-on.
How has ULI helped?
ULI was one of the first professional organizations I started attending, more than a decade ago. It gives people with ideas the resources to follow through.
ULI's brand recognition and support made a huge difference for our Miami 21 to 2100 White Paper, and there are many more examples like it. It has also brought me close friends, colleagues, and clients.
Thank you again to Cory, Rachael, and ULI Southeast Florida/Caribbean. If any of this connects to a site or project you're weighing, we'd be glad to talk it through.
Session details
Session: Young Leaders, Big Impact: Shaping Real Estate's Next Chapter
When: Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 10:00–10:20 AM
Where: Miami Beach Convention Center, Presentation Area A
Presented with: ULI Southeast Florida/Caribbean
