Derek has performed legal and business advisory services alongside TRG since 2005. In that year, he was recruited by TRG to join PRS Equities Limited, a diversified real estate investment and venture capital firm, as its Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Derek’s duties at PRS included managing and directing the company’s internal operating, organization and reporting functions, and participating in the company’s strategic planning efforts and acquisition endeavors as part of its leadership team. Derek’s role also included serving as the company’s in-house corporate counsel on a variety of matters. In 2010, Derek left PRS to form a legal and business consulting practice, now allied with TRG, focusing on providing practical legal solutions and guidance to business organizations and institutions. He also provides general consulting and asset and business management services within the real estate and other industries.
Derek began his professional career in 1992 with Jaffe, Raitt, Heuer & Weiss, a commercial law firm located in the Detroit metropolitan area. While at Jaffe, Derek specialized in general corporate and commercial law, as well as complex business transactions such as mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, real estate transactions, and corporate financings. He was a shareholder of the firm and assumed a variety of leadership roles including acting as the chairman of its business transactions practice group, and as one of the firm’s officers and directors. Derek is a graduate of the University of Michigan, from which he received a B.S.E. (Computer Engineering) in 1987, and a J.D. and an M.B.A. in 1992.