This interview is with Stephanie Zabriskie, Managing Director, Tavistock Group.
For readers meeting you for the first time, how do you describe your work at the intersection of global finance, development, and governance?
I work on large-scale development projects where capital, land, and government decisions are inseparable, and where structural choices determine long-term viability. My role is to structure and negotiate across investors, governments, and delivery teams to align capital, governance, and execution within complex political and regulatory environments.
Much of my work focuses on resolving misalignment around risk, scope, and information flow across institutions and cultures. I design decision frameworks and operating structures that are human-centered in practice, allowing first-of-their-kind projects to move forward with accountability, flexibility, and durable economic performance.
The way these projects are structured shapes not just financial outcomes, but also public trust, local economies, and how communities experience development over time.
What pivotal experiences or inflection points shaped your path into leading cross-border, public–private development projects?
A pivotal inflection point in my work came while leading the Harmony Cove Jamaica development. The project operated within a public and private structure in which the government was a shareholder rather than simply a regulator, collapsing the usual separation between political timelines, sovereign risk, and private capital expectations.
Early in the project, momentum slowed not because of capital constraints or technical capacity, but because risk was understood differently across cultures. Once I became involved in the project, it became clear that these perspectives had not been explicitly structured or reconciled within the design and negotiation process. Western teams were comfortable operating with conceptual design and refining scope through delivery while remaining focused on execution sequencing and timelines. Chinese contractors and lenders, by contrast, required highly specific scope definitions upfront in order to price risk and commit capital, and were confident in their ability to execute once that clarity existed.
Because these assumptions were never aligned within a shared decision framework, the same language was used to describe different expectations, leading to mispriced risk and misaligned budgets.
What ultimately unlocked movement was redesigning the communication and decision architecture itself. This meant explicitly accounting for each stakeholder’s perspective and risk concerns. It also required consistently clarifying intent throughout the process so that capital, government, and design and negotiation teams were operating within a shared framework.
That experience fundamentally shaped how I approach cross-border development today. Governance and information flow are not supporting functions. They are the system that determines whether complex projects move forward successfully or materialize at all.
When you lead a complex, multi-jurisdiction project, what sequence of actions do you use to align a cross-border capital stack with government priorities while keeping private investors committed?
When leading complex, multi-jurisdictional projects, I begin by establishing clarity around decision authority and the outcomes each stakeholder prioritizes. For governments, this includes long-term public benefit, political accountability, and alignment with national or regional priorities. For private investors, it includes profitability, capital protection, return certainty, and execution discipline. My role is to ensure that what is being designed and built can satisfy both sets of requirements without compromising commercial viability.
From there, I manage an incremental, structured process anchored in disciplined information flow. I determine when information must be shared, when input is required, and who needs to be involved at each stage across design development, budgeting, and negotiation. Feedback gathered at those points is translated back to principals and delivery teams and is used to shape the next phase of work. The process is structured but adaptive, with defined decision points and clear mechanisms for recalibration as conditions change.
This sequencing allows projects to remain responsive to political and market dynamics without destabilizing capital commitments. Large-scale developments unfold over many years, and design, budgets, contracts, and financing cannot advance in isolation. By controlling information flow, incorporating feedback at the right moments, and aligning execution with evolving priorities, government objectives remain aligned and investors stay committed because risk, returns, and expectations are actively managed throughout the life of the project.
How do you design the operating cadence and information handoffs so multi-country teams avoid time-zone bottlenecks?
When working with multi-country teams, I design the operating cadence around decision flow and the practical requirements of the teams doing the work. The objective is continuous forward movement while placing technical, design, and delivery teams in schedules that allow them to operate at peak effectiveness.
I start by distinguishing which decisions require real-time alignment and which can move asynchronously. Information is not handed off at the end of one team’s day. It is prepared and delivered at the start of the next team’s working day, with full context, assumptions, and decision history, so work can begin immediately rather than reopening prior discussions.
Information flow is treated as an operating discipline. Inputs, constraints, and intent are clearly documented so teams are not left to infer priorities or revisit resolved issues. This reduces rework and preserves momentum across regions.
The cadence itself is designed around the teams carrying the most technically intensive execution load. Their working hours are protected and prioritized. Executive and decision-making teams are expected to carry the scheduling flexibility, adjusting across time zones so engineers, designers, and delivery teams can work during their most productive hours. This human-centered approach reduces friction and fatigue, limits error, and allows complex, multi-country efforts to move faster with greater precision.
What decision framework guides you from stalemate to workable agreement in high-stakes negotiations with sovereigns, lenders, and developers?
I begin by listening. In high-stakes negotiations, how parties define risk is shaped as much by prior experience as by the specifics of the deal. I use a decision framework that separates stated positions from underlying risk concerns and sequences agreement as uncertainty is reduced. My first objective is to understand how each party interprets risk and why, without framing perspectives as right or wrong. Agreement only becomes possible once those concerns are clearly acknowledged.
In negotiations involving sovereigns, lenders, and developers, stalemates usually arise because each party is protecting a different constraint while relying on shared but imprecise language. I start by identifying what each party cannot afford to be wrong about. For sovereigns, this is typically political accountability and long-term public impact. For lenders, it is risk visibility and downside protection. For developers, it is execution certainty and economic viability.
Once those constraints are explicit for a given situation, I translate them into concrete choices around governance, scope, sequencing, and information flow. Broad areas of disagreement are broken into smaller, actionable components. In discussions, I move beneath high-level contract language to address the specific concerns directly. That alignment happens in conversation before contractual language is revised, since abstract wording without context often obscures the issue rather than resolving it.
From there, agreement is reached incrementally, with commitments increasing only as uncertainty is clarified. This approach keeps negotiations grounded in transparency, allows trust to build through forward movement, and moves complex, multi-party discussions out of stalemate and into workable agreement.
How do you set your threshold for “good enough to decide” under acute uncertainty and political pressure?
Under acute uncertainty, I separate what is known from what remains unresolved and assess whether the unknowns could materially change outcomes. I then evaluate both the potential impact of those uncertainties and whether the timing of their resolution is knowable.
If the timing of an uncertainty is clear, I make a deliberate decision about whether waiting creates more risk than proceeding. If the timing is unclear, I do not allow the entire process to stall. Instead, I identify parallel tracks. Some elements of the work can move forward safely regardless of how the uncertainty resolves, while others must remain flexible.
This approach is essential in long-duration projects such as Albany, Bahamas, and Harmony Cove, Jamaica, where design, approvals, and construction unfold over years, and political, regulatory, and fiscal conditions can change midstream. Governments shift. Priorities evolve. External conditions rarely remain static.
By advancing what is durable and sequencing what is sensitive, we avoid cumulative delay while preserving the ability to pivot. That balance defines what is good enough to decide under pressure.
How do you embed community needs into procurement, contracts, and KPIs so human-centered design survives large-scale execution?
Human-centered design survives large-scale execution through how the work is structured and managed day to day. Community needs are treated as active operating inputs that inform decisions continuously across planning, design, procurement, and delivery.
When I refer to community, I mean the people for whom the project is designed and who are affected by it. This includes those who will live in, work in, visit, and use the development, as well as the surrounding local community whose livelihoods, access, and environment are shaped by how the project is built and operated over time.
Those considerations are embedded directly into procurement and delivery by translating community priorities into concrete requirements within scopes of work, performance benchmarks, and decision criteria. Trade-offs are evaluated in real time alongside technical, commercial, and schedule considerations, with explicit attention to access, safety, continuity, dignity, and long-term use. This is especially important in public-private contexts, where planning decisions and public accountability intersect directly with lived outcomes.
Execution is strengthened by aligning design and construction approaches with local culture, skills, and conditions. This improves outcomes and reduces friction by grounding the project in how the community actually functions. Environmental conditions are treated as part of the same system, shaping design choices, construction methods, and long-term stewardship.
Accountability comes through management practice and governance. Community-related priorities are reinforced through sequencing, review, and performance oversight, and reflected consistently in how decisions are made throughout delivery. Human-centered design endures at scale because it is actively led and embedded in the mechanisms that govern execution.
How do you evaluate aptitude and attitude across cultures when forming leadership teams for multinational deals?
When forming leadership teams for multinational deals, I pay close attention to how people operate in situations where authority is shared, information is incomplete, and outcomes matter more than attribution. In those environments, aptitude and attitude reveal themselves together through behavior, not résumés.
I look for leaders who combine technical competence with curiosity and earnest engagement. Curiosity shows up in how someone asks questions across cultures and constraints. Earnestness appears in whether they engage to solve the problem rather than protect their position or visibility. The strongest leaders stay anchored to outcomes, not to credit or perception.
I do not evaluate people against a single cultural standard. Instead, I assess how they function when norms differ and how they handle ambiguity, disagreement, hierarchy, and responsibility across borders. Leaders who need to dominate the process or control the narrative tend to fracture teams in multinational settings. Those who can translate across perspectives and adapt their approach without losing rigor tend to hold systems together.
These traits become most visible under pressure. In long-duration, cross-border projects such as Albany Bahamas and Harmony Cove Jamaica, the leaders who sustained momentum were not necessarily the loudest or most credentialed. They were the ones who could revise assumptions without defensiveness, absorb new constraints, and remain focused on the outcome as conditions changed.
When those qualities are present, teams can navigate complexity without fragmentation. That is the threshold I look for when building leadership for multinational deals.
What governance mechanism have you found most effective at preventing cost overruns and political drift over a project’s life?
Cost movement and political change are not exceptions in large-scale, long-duration projects; they are expected conditions. Markets shift, fiscal priorities evolve, and political leadership changes over time. Effective governance does not attempt to prevent those forces; it is designed to absorb them and respond intelligently.
The most effective mechanism is continuous transparency supported by disciplined information flow. New conditions are surfaced early and treated as inputs to decision-making, not disruptions. Core assumptions are made explicit, revisited regularly, and adjusted as realities change rather than being allowed to drift unnoticed.
Governance is strongest when decisions, scope commitments, and capital deployment are sequenced instead of locked in all at once. This creates flexibility without sacrificing financial discipline. Projects can adapt to political and market changes while preserving momentum and cost control.
In practice, strong governance is less about exerting control and more about providing guidance. By accepting that change is inevitable, planning for it, and designing systems that respond deliberately, projects remain aligned and financially sound across their full life cycle.