our story
Abby Davids Rocha and Sheila Laderberg Tarasiuk founded Pedal Retail Advisors in 2020. The duo first met when Abby was leasing commercial real estate and Sheila was growing a chain of coffee shops. Fast forward to a global pandemic, when Abby and Sheila were independently building their own businesses dedicated to first-time retailers, both determined to solve the very same problem; they knew that if they worked together, one plus one would equal a million.
Retail real estate is an insider’s game, yet retailers seeking to open a bricks-and-mortar business have no choice but to engage with this complicated and unfamiliar system. As a result, too many retailers sign the wrong leases and leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the negotiating table because they didn’t have access to the same quality expertise as the big guys.Â
Pedal is defining a new standard of service for independent brick and mortar retailers.
abby davids rocha
Founder & Retail Broker (DC Metro Area)
Abby has been a retail real estate broker since she graduated from Georgetown in 2012, and while she's represented both landlords and tenants of all sizes, independent retailers are by far her favorite. She has seen how powerful the right representation can be in terms of dollars and cents - and getting great deals for businesses that are working so hard to bring something creative and new into the world is incredibly motivating to Abby.
Prior to founding Pedal, Abby served as Director of Real Estate for Compass Coffee and as a retail broker at CBRE. Abby is a Boston native and Georgetown University graduate.
sheila laderberg tarasiuk
Founder & Retail Consultant
Sheila's retail career began in the mid '80s Windexing glass top coffee tables in her family's furniture store. After undergrad at the University of Virginia and graduate school at the Hotel School at Cornell, she's owned her own retail business and grown many others.
Sheila is a retailer through and through, and she's never met a cash register she didn't like. She learned the hard way that new and emerging brick-and-mortar businesses are at a dangerous disadvantage when they enter the existing commercial real estate ecosystem. Sheila delivers encouraging, honest guidance to retailers making critical, long term decisions that will fundamentally impact their professional, financial and emotional lives.Â
