Founder & President

Malaika Rivers is the Founder & President of Pontem Resources. She helps businesses and governments work together to imagine and build great places. She works with various changemakers — from CEOs to city mayors — on cost-sharing real estate development strategies.

Malaika’s clients include professional sports organizations as they expand into commercial real estate. She advises Inter Miami CF and the Atlanta Hawks/CIM as these teams pursue prominent sports-anchored entertainment districts in their respective markets. Before this, she worked with the Atlanta Braves to develop infrastructure for Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta.

Malaika is the foremost expert on Community Improvement Districts (CIDs), a type of special assessment district used by commercial property owners to consistently attract government grants. Her CID expertise runs the entire lifecycle, from early-stage exploration to late-stage maturation. Having worked for and with real estate developers, consulting firms, governments, and planning organizations, she combines vision, process, funding, and politics into actionable infrastructure strategies.

Malaika has been noted in SBJ’s Power Player/Next Up, 100 Influential Women to Know, Georgia 500, and 25 Power Women to Watch. She received her B.S. from Virginia Tech and her C.M.E. from Harvard Business School.

Malaika’s drive to conquer challenging terrain for her clients extends to her personal life. Whether hiking mountains or exploring deserts, Malaika is in constant pursuit of the way forward.