Roman Carel

Roman grew up in Paris watching his grandfather build something that would outlast him. Carel – the footwear brand his grandfather transformed into a cult icon of 1960s French fashion – taught him early that the best things are made with decades in mind. That instinct found its first expression in 1999 when, returning from an exchange programme at UCLA and training in e-commerce, Roman founded lenegociateur.com – France's first price comparison website. The company was acquired by PriceRunner two years later, and subsequently by Value Click Inc.

He was 25. He had already learned that the best time to move is before everyone else sees where things are going.

Athena Advisers followed in 2003. The trigger was clear: the growth of low-cost airlines was opening up southern Europe to a new kind of buyer — people who'd fallen in love with places on holiday and were beginning to wonder if they could stay. Roman had grown up skiing in Val d'Isère and understood the pull of those places intimately. The cultural and logistical barriers to acting on it were real, and he saw them as problems worth solving.

Lisbon came into the picture almost by accident. In 2006, Roman stopped in the city en route to Fortaleza, where he was developing a kitesurfing project in northern Brazil. Neither city felt significant at the time. Both would become central to everything that followed. He moved to Rio de Janeiro, channelling Brazilian investment into Portugal as Lisbon began attracting serious international attention — and arrived in the market years before most of his competitors knew it was worth watching. He is now based in Portugal.

Over two decades, Athena has grown from a two-person operation to one of Europe's leading property advisory and development firms — not by chasing volume, but by staying close to the people at the centre of every transaction.

Roman sits on the board of Peugeot 1810, has invested in start-ups across three continents, and is a member of Plastic Oceans. He brings the same long-term thinking to all of it.

His view on the work itself hasn't changed since day one: you have to love people very much to do this well.