Featured Alumnus: Jimmy Little '06 | Avon Old Farms News | About Us | Avon Old Farms

Jimmy Little ’06 could see the smoke from his Fortress Investment Group office on the western side of Los Angeles in Brentwood. An L.A. resident for more than a decade, he maintained the same belief as his colleagues around him that the wildfire would remain in the canyon as they almost always do. As the fire began to spread over the hills and encroach upon his neighborhood, his wife Kaitlyn and their two-year-old son left their home and joined him at the office—more as a routine precaution than anything else. Wildfires weren’t a rare occurrence in Southern California, but as the day went on, it started to become clear that this fire was different. Then, Little got a text from a friend that he won’t ever forget. It was a picture from a live news report about the fire. On the screen was Little’s Pacific Palisades home, completely ablaze. “I just sank in my chair,” he recalls. “We didn’t get anything out. We lost everything.”

The 2025 Palisades Fire was one of the most destructive and deadly fires in California history. Almost 7,000 structures were destroyed, including Little’s home. “We lived out of a hotel for three weeks and stayed in a friend’s guesthouse for a month. We’re renting elsewhere now waiting for an opportunity to move back, but they’re still rebuilding the area.” Important documents like birth certificates and passports, personal possessions like family photos, and everyday items like clothing were all gone. “I told one of my Avon buddies, Sam Cole ’04 that I was bummed I had lost all my Avon gear in the fire, so he sent me a care package with new merch and a nice note.”

As Little and his community dealt with the destruction, life continued to move forward. “Work continues. We were juggling that, plus looking for a new place to live, taking care of a toddler, and we had been planning on having another child. I was feeling tired,” Little shares. It’s completely understandable that Little would be overwhelmed and exhausted during this time, but he soon found out that there was a larger reason for his fatigue.

Just under a year after the Palisades Fire, Little and his wife had regained their routine and hopes of expanding their family. As the two underwent various fertility and preconception preparations, they were hit with a different type of disaster. “The doctor called and said something’s wrong.” An ultrasound followed, revealing a tumor. “The tests came back and it was the most aggressive form of testicular cancer. I looked at my wife and thought, ‘This is it. What do we do now.’” 

Luckily, Little was able to get surgery quickly, but was still given a 50/50 chance that the cancer would return and spread elsewhere. So, he opted for the additional treatment of chemotherapy. Six weeks of treatments brought physical pain, an emotional toll, and the loss of his hair. He says he relied heavily on family and friends during this time, including his Avon brothers. “Sam Cole flew out for a week. I was getting texts and calls from other guys. It helped me to just keep fighting.”

By Memorial Day weekend, Little was cancer-free. “I feel so blessed and grateful to have caught it early. The silver lining is that now I get quarterly checkups, so I’ll catch it if it returns. It really puts things into perspective, though. It makes the fire look like nothing.”

Although he originally planned on attending, Little’s recovery prevented him from attending his 20-year Avon reunion at the beginning of October. But it didn’t prevent him from contributing. He still volunteered to help with the planning process and continues to host other Avon events in the L.A. area. The reason why? Little loves Avon. “I feel super fortunate to have gone to Avon. I have so many great memories and I made so many connections that will last forever. Three of my groomsmen were Avon guys.”

Little’s journey at Avon began in the fall of 2003. After attending Cardigan Mountain School up until 9th grade, he had a decision to make for his next three years of high school. His older sister was a student at Taft, and he had a good friend Pat Sheridan ’04 already enrolled at Avon, so he was familiar with the school. “The all-boys experience was great at Cardigan. I looked at a few schools, but ultimately decided on Avon. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.” He never doubted his decision either, partly due to the fact that his first-year roommate at Avon, Patrick Williams ’06, was the same roommate he had had at Cardigan. “So, it was a pretty seamless transition,” Little shares.

While at Avon, Little was an integral member of both the varsity football and baseball teams. He was the youngest player on the football team in his first year at Avon, but that didn’t stop him from competing alongside his collegiate-committed teammates. “It was a great experience. I still regularly talk with Kevin Driscoll ’72, P’08 and my other coaches. I really enjoyed it.” He also played hockey and was a member of the Spirit Club. In his senior year, he served as a Dorm Monitor in Elephant 3.

After Avon, he matriculated to Southern Methodist University where he double majored in economics and sociology. “I hooked back up with more Avon buddies there. We had a lot of fun.” While at SMU he was elected by the University’s administration and faculty as one of three students selected to serve on the University Judicial Board, responsible for determining University violations and appropriate sanctions. “That position, I had to have integrity,” Little says.

In the summer after his freshman year of college, Little took an internship in Los Angeles with Fox Cable Networks where he helped launch the Big Ten Network. During a networking dinner at Bel-Air Bay Club for other SMU students and alumni in the area, Little met Kaitlyn for the first time. “I walked out of that dinner and told my mom, ‘I’m going to date that girl.’” Sure enough, the two began dating that fall during their sophomore year, graduated college together in 2010, and married on July 15, 2016, at that same venue, the Bel-Air Bay Club.

Little began his professional career at Barclays Capital in Institutional Equity Sales within its Global Distribution division based in New York City. In 2014, he and his wife relocated to L.A., where Little took on the role of Vice President at Caruso, a privately owned real estate development company. There, he spent seven years working across all aspects of real estate acquisitions, development, leasing, asset management and was responsible for the financial performance of the company’s 3+ million square feet of retail, multifamily, mixed-use and office assets. During this time, he also earned his MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Since 2021, Little has been a Director at Fortress Investment Group within its Credit and Real Estate funds business, where he originates and invests in commercial real estate opportunities across the U.S., spanning all asset classes and across capital structure, including public and private equity, structured equity, floating-rate commercial first mortgages, mezzanine debt, and bridge financing.

Outside of work, Little serves on the Board of Advisors for SMU’s Cox School of Business Folsom Institute for Real Estate and is a guest lecturer in the real estate development undergraduate program at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is also an active mentor with Thrive Scholars and Operation Progress, organizations that support high-achieving students from low-income communities in South Los Angeles and Watts.

Little shares how his time at Avon Old Farms prepared him for such a successful career, “It instilled hard work, discipline, and the ability to manage your time. Everyone at Avon was working hard to get better every day. That doesn’t happen at most institutions, but Avon has a great environment with all the resources available to you to take advantage of. A lot of lessons I learned at Avon translate to the professional world.”

If the last few years are any indication, it’s clear Little has upheld the school’s emphasis on perseverance as well. “Everybody hits bumps in the road, and some of them are big ones. You get through them, you figure it out, and you keep moving. The fire took our house, and the cancer took a lot out of me, but neither one touched what matters. When I look at my wife and my son and everything we still have ahead of us, I have so much to be grateful for.”

He has his sights set on the school’s centennial celebrations the weekend of June 9-11, 2028, as his next opportunity to return to campus, but he’s admittedly looking further into the future as well. “I hope to send my son to Avon one day,” he says. “It’s a special place.”

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