Team Members

William N. (Bill) Johnston (Chief Operating Officer & CFO)
As a growth specialist with more than 25 years experience, Mr. Johnston brings extensive expertise from multiple industries (including the development of over 10 million square feet of industrial property) to accelerate growth, optimize capital structure, and ensure robust systems and risk management controls are in place to maximize profitability.

Starting his career with Coopers & Lybrand Information Technology practice as a financial modeling specialist, Mr. Johnston subsequently provided 20 years financial and operational executive leadership to privately held and public high-growth companies. His experience spans multiple sectors including building materials, food trading, outsourcing, logistics, enterprise software, consulting, and hospitality. His accomplishments include raising over $1 billion of growth capital, and growing the North American subsidiary of a UK public company (Tibbett & Britten) from a startup to over 11,000 employees handling $35 billion of goods annually for market leaders such as Wal-Mart.

Mr. Johnston holds undergraduate degrees in Finance and Systems from McGill University (Montreal, Canada), a graduate degree in Public Accountancy (McGill), Masters in Business Administration (Harvard Business School) and professional designations as Chartered Account (Canada) and Certified Public Accountant (Illinois).

Joel Palmer (Director of Constructions Services)
With over 18 years of construction related experience Mr. Palmer has advanced his position over the years from Jobsite Superintendent to Mike Carter Construction Inc.'s first Senior Vice President. Among his accomplishments include the establishment of a full-service development and building program for a major national real estate company that produced 8,000,000 square feet of commercial buildings and as many as 30-40 projects per year.

At Liberty, Mr. Palmer coordinates all aspects of the due diligence, A&E, and construction.

Mr. Palmer graduated first in his class at the United States Marine Corps in Paris Island, South Carolina. He went on to serve in Korea, China, Philippines, and Japan where he was recognized with several rank advancements and awards. He also served as a member of the Marine Reserves for Operation Desert Storm.

Mr. Russell Brown (Director-Hospitality Operations)
Mr. Brown is a Certified Hotel Administrator (CHA) with over 20 years of extensive
hospitality operations experience gained working in many brands (i.e. Holiday Inn,
Residence Inn, Town Place Suites, Hampton Inn). Most notably he worked with similar products to Value Place such as Jack DeBoer's Residence Inn in its early days and Town Place Suites.

Russ' experience leading high-impact startup and acquisition teams, emphasis on teamwork and high-reliability execution qualify him to develop a proactive, best in class operations team that combines Value Place and Liberty best practices to deliver great experience for guests, a great work place for team members, product quality, growth/learning, and profitability across all properties.

Ed Gard (Director of Pre-Development Services)
Mr. Gard has over 20 years of experience in the construction and development industry for multi family, single family, time share and assisted living communities and ventures.

A native of Florida with a bachelor's degree in Building Science from Auburn University, Mr. Gard is a state certified licensed general contractor. He began his career as an assistant superintendent for Lincoln Property Company prior to graduating from Auburn and advanced into the roles of project manager and senior project manager with LPC as well other national multi family and single family developers such as Gables Residential and Toll Brothers. Most recently he served as the Director of Development for an Orlando based multi family development and construction firm producing $45 million of construction work and approximately $75 million of finished developments annually. His role as a Development Manager at Liberty Investment Properties includes full life cycle responsibilities beginning with input on site selection through to completion and delivery of the product to operations.

Robin Caston (Director of Finance)
Robin Caston has over 20 years of construction & real estate accounting experience that began in the 80’s as a bookkeeper for a family office owning controlling interests in real estate investments primarily shopping centers and apartment complexes.  Mid way through her career, Robin graduated from Stetson University in Deland, Florida with a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Accountancy.  Robin is also a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Florida.  Following graduation, Robin was recruited by KPMG, Orlando where her client base consisted of real estate and agribusiness.  Robin left public accounting and joined CNL where she headed the accounting departments for the private placements and real estate development business units.  Robin also participated in the creation of many of CNL’s private placements during 2006.

David Macdonald (Director of Development Management Office)
Over 20 years of experience from a broad spectrum of growth industries including building Radio and Television studio and transmission facilities as well as direct marketing, logistics, software, consulting and cross functional program management experience for public multinational companies.

Mr. Macdonald holds an Bachelors degree in Engineering as well as a Masters degree from the University of Toronto.

Chuck Zernickow (Director of Pre-Development Services)
Chuck develops and obtains jurisdictional approvals for the properties selected by LIP’s site acquisition team in Colorado, Utah, Arizona & Texas.

Chuck’s 35 year construction career includes a wide variety of responsibilities including accounting, risk management, safety, and various construction management assignments.  He has worked in hospitality development/design/construction since 1997 as a construction manager with Candlewood Suites, consulting construction manager with Foxcor, Little Rock AR (Westin Diplomat Resort, Hollywood, FL; Emerald Bay Four Season Resort, Great Exuma, Bahamas; Harrahs Rincon Resort, Southern, CA; Station Red Rock Resort, Las Vegas, NV) and a construction project manager with Value Place LLC, Construction Services.

He is a graduate of Wichita State University with a degree in Business Administration.  He lives in Wichita, KS and offices out of his home.  

Adam Mikkelson  (Director of Site Acquisition)

Adam joined the company in 2005 after completing his undergraduate degree in Economics from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. He began his career at Liberty facilitating the rebranding of eight storage facilities and was accountable for the daily storage operations of our MyNeighborhoodStorageCenter portfolio which has now grown to ten stores. In 2006 he took on an additional role as the Pre-Opening Coordinator for our Value Place development projects. Currently, he serves as the Director of Site Acquisitions for our western markets which include Salt Lake City (UT), Denver (CO), Phoenix (AZ), and Austin (TX). The responsibilities include finding sites that meet our Value Place development criteria and ensuring a smooth process till closing. He is a licensed sales associate in the state of Florida and is pursuing his CCIM designation.