Christopher and Aleyda met in 1995 and married in 1998. In 2002 they moved to Port St. Lucie, which has been home and headquarters ever since. The firm came later, but the working partnership behind it is the older story.
Elevation began with a question Christopher could not answer from inside a bank. He had spent his career in commercial, healthcare and SBA lending, and the physicians and business owners across the desk from him kept describing the same condition: a practice that was full every day, profitable on every report, and somehow never liquid at the end of the month. A bank is built to price that risk, not to fix it. So in August 2019 he and Aleyda founded Elevation to do the part the bank could not.
Almost none of it turned out to be exotic. A practice in trouble is usually a practice whose books are months behind, whose revenue cycle leaks somewhere between the work and the deposit, and whose owner has never seen an honest cash-flow forecast. Put those things right, in that order, and most of the drama goes away. Clean books, collected revenue, honest plan — that is still the whole method, and still the order the firm works in.
Aleyda had built and operated businesses of her own, she had the training in business administration, and she had the harder talent: she could sit across from an owner who was embarrassed about their numbers and make the conversation feel survivable.
Christopher, returned to banking to lead SBA lending nationally at City National Bank of Florida. What he added was a second desk. With Carlos Pelaez, he built Elevation Advisory: business brokerage and commercial real estate for owners who are ready to sell, buy, or move their building. Two desks, one standard, and the same answer to the only question an owner is really asking: tell me the truth about my numbers.
