COSTA MESA, CA-NAIOP SoCal and the Center for Real Estate at UC Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business have named Kurt Stuart as the 2013-'14 recipient of the NAIOP SoCal-CRE Fellowship, a combined learning experience and financial award designed to develop and prepare future real estate industry leaders. Stuart is currently a director, North American lending, at GE Real Estate.

The $7,500 scholarship award will be used to support Stuart's studies at UC Irvine's Merage School where he began the MBA program in September 2013. One of the benefits of the Fellowship is that he will also attend meetings of the NAIOP SoCal board of directors, where he will have the opportunity to network with a 40-person board composed of some of the region's top real estate executives.

"Kurt has already built a strong résumé of experience at GE Real Estate," says Jim Proehl, 2014 president of NAIOP SoCal and EVP and managing director for PM Realty Group's western division. "He epitomizes the goal for this program: to select an up-and-coming real estate leader who is looking to build upon their foundation by adding to their educational and professional commercial real estate experience."

In Stuart's present role, he sources and originates commercial real estate loans throughout the Southwestern US. He began his career in GE's financial management program in Kansas City, MO, in 2005 and has since worked in a number of capacities for the firm. He has been a NAIOP SoCal member since 2007 and graduated from the NAIOP SoCal YPG program in 2009.

Education is a core tenet of NAIOP SoCal's offerings to the real estate industry. In addition to the Fellowship, the chapter created the  NAIOP SoCal Young Professionals Group, a 12-month, 70-hour education and leadership training program design to include access to/training form some of Southern California's top real estate executives, classroom sessions on various segments of the real estate industry, plus leadership and communication-skills development with a noted university professor.