EVERY FOUNDER'S FIRST RESORT

Entrepreneurs who want to get away from it allbut still network and hang out with like-minded CEOShave found their preferred destination at Palm Heights.

- By Anna Silman

Gabriella Khalil is sitting across from me in the well-appointed lounge area of 161 Water Street, also known as Water Street Associates, or the WSA building—the 31-story office tower in Lower Manhattan where she's a fixture.

The 1982 building is the former headquarters of insurance giant AIG, and hosts office spaces for designers Bode and Rosie Assoulin and the nonalcoholic apéritif brand Ghia, among others. It's just one of several Khalil environments in New York: There's also SAA, the private members club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Happier Grocery, an Erewhon-esque supermarket that serves $16 charcoal smoothies.

Khalil has long, jet-black hair parted in the middle and wears a gray cinched-waist Jacquemus denim set and puffy Loewe slides. She's as poised and put-together as you would expect from the woman who created one of the most sought-after vacation destinations in the Caribbean: Palm Heights, in Grand Cayman.

Her vision for Palm Heights is to create a haven where people who are typically in founder mode can dabble in vacation mode and still maintain a certain level of ambition. On every front, the property aims to be best in class. “In the past, things were a bit more divided, in the sense of: This is a wellness hotel, this is a food hotel, this is a design hotel,” Khalil explains. “But [at Palm Heights], all of these things overlap.”