Alumni & Friends : Alumni Profiles

Getting What You Want, and Wanting More

Augusto Sasso
MBA '98

A job in investment banking is no easy score. But when Augusto Sasso set out to get a job with Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc. (DLJ), the company was in the middle of an acquisition. He worked out his own financial model for the transaction and made repeated trips to DLJ to get it seen. He loitered by elevators. He tracked down e-mail addresses. He was, he admits, a stalker, but it worked.

For the next six years, Sasso lived his dream career for DLJ’s Los Angeles offices. But 120-hour weeks and traveling 300,000 miles a year didn’t lend itself to a growing family, a fact that ultimately led Sasso to Manhattan Beach, Calif. to become a founder and managing partner of Preservation Partners Development (PPD). He still flexes his finance prowess, but now for low-income families. PPD buys and rehabilitates affordable-housing properties, and that’s where his expertise comes into play — creatively building finance packages that rival what “open market” developers can pay.

His passion for meaningful action has also led Sasso to create the non-profit Santa’s Truck, which provides gifts to low-income families. He recalls how, in the organization’s first year, he parked a Ryder truck full of gifts in a family’s driveway. A six-year-old boy, eyes wide, said, “Wow, Christmas presents! Is that Santa’s truck?” The name stuck as did the memory of the boy’s happiness, erasing any doubts Sasso might have had about stepping away from the career he fought so hard to win. “That’s exactly why I left,” he says. “If I can affect someone that much, I did the right thing.”