Skip to Content
Top Veteran Business Leaders of Influence Recognized by the San Diego Business Journal
CGS3 Partners Steven Otto, Sean Southard Nominated for Annual Award
SAN DIEGO (October 28, 2025) – Steven Otto and Sean Southard, both former U.S. Navy officers and partners with Crosbie Gliner Schiffman Southard & Swanson (CGS3), have been recognized by the San Diego Business Journal as nominees in the publication’s Top 50 Veteran Business Leaders of Influence for 2025. Award recipients will be announced at a special University Club event on November 13th, with honorees featured in a special supplement on November 17th.
An annual tribute to Veterans Day, this program recognizes San Diego’s most dedicated and influential veteran business leaders – celebrating their professional achievements, community impact, and continued commitment to service beyond the military.
Both Otto and Southard exemplify those ideals – transitioning from distinguished Navy careers to key leadership roles at CGS3, one of Southern California’s premier commercial real estate law firms.
A founding partner of CGS3, Sean Southard has helped guide the firm’s growth over the past 13 years into a recognized leader in commercial real estate law, with a national portfolio of high-profile transactions.
A graduate of the University of San Diego (USD), Southard earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations before being commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer. He served tours in Iraq and Somalia, experiences that honed his leadership, focus, and discipline – qualities he now brings to the fast-paced world of commercial real estate law.
Today, he is a leading attorney in the commercial real estate sector and has successfully negotiated leasing transactions totaling millions of square feet across all asset classes, including office, industrial, retail, and life science. A frequent lecturer at legal and real estate industry programs, Southard previously served as an associate at Cox, Castle & Nicholson and as a partner at Allen Matkins before helping to found CGS3 in 2013.
A seasoned attorney, Steven Otto brings a rare combination of legal, technical, and operational insight to his practice. Before joining CGS3, he served as senior in-house counsel for Pinnacle West Capital Corporation and previously practiced with Latham & Watkins and Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps (now Dentons), where he became a partner.
Otto’s extensive experience includes the acquisition, development, leasing, licensing, and sale of complex office, industrial, retail, and mixed-use projects. He has negotiated major master developer and merchant builder agreements, as well as private and public development deals for large-scale retail and residential projects. His clients include international corporations, REITs, developers, and joint ventures, and he has played a key legal role supporting one of the nation’s largest nuclear power generating sites.
With a degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and two deployments to the Persian Gulf, Otto continues to draw on his military and technical background to craft innovative solutions to complex real estate challenges and deal structures. His dual understanding of legal frameworks and operational technology makes him a trusted advisor for clients navigating sophisticated and nontraditional transactions.
About Crosbie Gliner Schiffman Southard & Swanson LLP (CGS3)
CGS3 is a recognized leader among a new generation of commercial real estate law firms with practice areas covering the entire commercial real estate life cycle, including finance, acquisition/disposition, entity formation, tax, construction & development, land use, leasing, distressed asset workouts and dispute resolution. Earning a reputation as one of California’s leading commercial real estate law firms, CGS3 recruits some of the state’s top real estate attorneys from both large corporate firms and senior in-house positions. For more information, visit http://www.cgs3.com.