Chrysilios Chrysiliou
CEO and Real Estate Developer
Chrysilios Chrysiliou has spent four decades moving between runways, dining rooms, and development sites. He flew first, built a flight school into a 21-aircraft operation, then carried that same hands-on discipline into restaurants, coffeehouses, and commercial real estate. Every venture started with something he could operate himself.
The Long Route
Chrysiliou earned his pilot's license and instructional rating in the early 1980s, not long after arriving in America from Cyprus. He taught students to fly, then in 1986 bought a small flight school in Southern California with a partner. Under their management it grew to 21 aircraft and nationwide jet charter service, with FAA commendations along the way. The 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged the operation badly enough that he sold it and moved on.
That move was into import/export, running Transworld Innovation out of the US and Europe through the rest of the 1990s. By the early 2000s he had shifted again, joining RDPH Properties, Inc. as CEO, where he still leads commercial development today. Real estate gave him the platform; food service gave him the second act he wanted.
In the 2010s he opened a restaurant and built out Honeycup Coffeehouse and Creamery, a run of locations he still owns. More recently he founded Nurifo, a food-as-medicine company making meals for people with specific dietary needs — a project that ties his restaurant background to something closer to public health.
He still flies. Aviation was the first discipline he mastered, and it shaped how he has run every business since: check the instruments, trust the training, and know exactly who is in charge of the aircraft.