Built on experience.
Driven by partnership.

Executive Chairman & Managing Partner

Mike Shannon is a veteran developer and builder with more than 40 years of experience delivering large-scale retail, multifamily, and commercial projects across the Southeast. As co-founder of Shannon, Strobel & Weaver Constructors and Engineers, he helped shape the development and construction of nearly 400 Walmart stores and more than 12,000 multifamily units. His firm was recognized as one of only five preferred Walmart contractors nationwide, a designation that reflects sustained performance, disciplined delivery, and the ability to execute consistently at scale.

Over his career, Mike has built a reputation for taking projects from raw land to completion and for understanding the full development lifecycle. He has navigated site selection, entitlements, sitework, financing coordination, and delivery, and he is known for structuring projects so they work for owners, municipalities, and end users over the long term. His approach blends practical construction expertise with the judgment required to manage risk, schedule, and complexity across multiple stakeholders.

At Vanguard Industrial Partners, Mike leads development and delivery strategy, with responsibility for execution planning, project oversight, and build coordination. He brings the operational rigor and field-tested experience that turns feasibility into buildable projects, strengthening VIP’s ability to deliver industrial facilities that are investable, durable, and aligned with community and operator objectives.

Managing Partner, Strategy & Capital

Dan Sexton is an industrial capital strategist who operates at the intersection of technology, investment, and real assets. Over the past 20+ years, he has built and led ventures, advised executive teams, and designed systems that translate complex operational realities into clear financial and execution pathways. A Georgetown University graduate with deep experience in computer science and analytics, he combines investor discipline with technical fluency in industrial project formation.

Before Vanguard Industrial Partners, Dan worked across enterprise software, private investment management, and product commercialization, where he supported capital allocation, acquisition evaluation, and large-scale modernization initiatives. His experience spans growth-stage ventures, private investment platforms, and private-equity-adjacent environments, with a consistent focus on turning ambiguity into structured decisions.

At Vanguard Industrial Partners, Dan leads the upstream architecture of industrial projects and aligns operators, municipalities, utilities, and capital partners before commitments harden. He builds the analytical frameworks, financial models, and capital structures that determine whether a project is viable, financeable, and resilient under real-world constraints.

His work includes site selection analytics, incentive strategy, lease structure optimization (ground leases, NNN, and structured leaseback pathways), SBA and structured finance routes where appropriate, and the deployment of modern data and AI tooling to compress feasibility and underwriting timelines. The result is a clearer, faster path from operator intent to an investable, execution-ready project—designed to reduce friction for public partners, improve certainty for operators, and increase transparency for capital.

Partner, Capital Markets & Credit

Donald is a banking and credit executive with more than four decades of experience in commercial lending, risk management, and institutional leadership. He has held senior roles across community and regional banks, including President and CEO of Capital Bank, where he recruited the board, raised capital through multiple offerings, and led early-stage growth and balance sheet development. At Amerifirst, he served as Senior Lender and Chief Credit Officer, managing teams across multiple offices and overseeing major credit approvals. Earlier in his career, he worked with the RTC and FDIC and served as CEO for institutions in conservatorship, navigating complex workouts, negotiated settlements, and stabilization efforts through demanding credit cycles.

Known for disciplined underwriting and practical structuring, Don has originated, evaluated, and approved a broad spectrum of commercial and real estate credits. His track record spans growth environments and stress environments, with a consistent focus on loan quality, portfolio performance, and clear, defensible decision-making. He is valued for bringing clarity to credit risk, identifying hidden failure points early, and structuring deals in ways that lenders and capital partners can support with confidence.

At Vanguard Industrial Partners, Don supports capital markets and financial structuring for industrial projects. He works with operators, lenders, and capital partners to align financing pathways with project realities, helping convert capital-intensive development into financeable, execution-ready transactions. His role is to strengthen credit credibility and improve the quality of project packaging by ensuring assumptions, risks, and repayment logic are explicit and bankable.

Partner & General Counsel

Travis Wisdom is a legal and development executive with experience at the intersection of data infrastructure, real estate, and public–private partnerships. As a co-founder of AUBix, he helped launch and scale a regional data center platform, coordinating site readiness, utility and fiber access, and tenant requirements while navigating regulatory, contractual, and incentive frameworks. His work has focused on the practical realities that determine whether infrastructure projects can move from concept to deliverable operations, especially where power, permitting, and schedule are critical-path constraints.

He also leads The Wisdom Firm, where for more than a decade he has advised operators, municipalities, and investors on transactions that balance speed, compliance, and durable economics. Travis is known for pragmatic deal-making and clear, plain-English risk framing, and he brings hands-on experience across entity formation, ground leases and easements, title and access issues, vendor and MSA negotiation, incentive and abatement structures, and coordination with utilities and local government stakeholders. He is frequently engaged where counterparties need agreements that are simple to execute, defendable under scrutiny, and aligned with long-term operational realities.

At Vanguard Industrial Partners, Travis leads legal strategy and public-partner alignment for industrial and data infrastructure projects. He structures clear, financeable agreements, supports entitlement and incentive pathways, and helps ensure VIP projects move from term sheet to execution with well-defined rights, obligations, and schedules. His role is to reduce friction across stakeholders and protect project momentum by keeping rights, risk, and accountability explicit for operators, communities, and capital partners.