In this episode of Border Masters, hosts Gustavo de la Fuente and Monique Casellas sit down with Isaac Abadi, CEO of Grupo Abadi. He was born in Panama, left at three because of the invasion, grew up in Mexico City until the kidnappings pushed the family north, and landed in San Diego as a teenager. His father, a recognized developer, started getting calls asking why he wasn't building in Tijuana. The answer became New City Residential, the first condominium high rises on that side of the border, built with three pools, a gym and a spa because nobody believed anyone would buy vertical living in a city where real estate meant a piece of land. Isaac came back from Mexico City in 2009 and walked straight into the crash. Construction stopped, the third tower stalled, the bank was owed a great deal of money, and the lesson he took from it was to build a company that did not depend on any single economy. The finance arm came out of that. So did everything after.

The harder turn came later. Both of his parents passed away, and the question that followed reorganized the business around something other than return. New City Medical Plaza was the first answer: a hospital, a hotel with 155 rooms, and thirty stories of doctors' offices built on the land where two residential towers were supposed to go, designed as a one stop shop for medical tourism so a patient could cross the border on foot, get treated, and walk back. Inside it sits Centro de Luz, the holistic space named for his mother, who was an art therapist. The hospital now offers sound healing before surgery, and the surgeons like it because patients arrive calmer. His mother taught him that. The buildings were his father's energy. What happens inside them is hers.

What he is building now runs further in that direction. Orjaim is an ibogaine clinic operating inside a hospital setting rather than a private house, treating Israeli veterans for PTSD, with research underway alongside Israeli hospitals and an argument that clinical trials costing a fortune in San Diego could be run in Tijuana for a fraction of it. Ayeka, the retreat center his group just opened in Valle de Guadalupe, takes its name from a Hebrew question meaning where are you. Isaac had his own first ibogaine journey six years ago and describes it as the thing that gave him the purpose he operates from now. Asked what being a border business person taught him, he points to the same thing that has run through every project: two cultures sitting next to each other, and the chance to take the best of both.

Listen to the full episode of Border Masters and discover more stories at olasmedia.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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