As for advice for the next generation, I believe the best place to understand the fundamentals of commercial real estate is on the debt and financing side. Many of the large debt platforms have well-established training programs that will help provide substantial exposures to the different property types, capitalization structures, strategies and geographies that can help broaden horizons of where you may want to end up in your career. The deal volume on the debt side is many times the deal flow of what acquisition groups can review, and it also allows for a robust database of contacts.

Please share with us the best lessons learned about your unique journey. The best lesson learned so far is that every job along the way has really helped me get to where I am today. Even if that specific role was not exciting, it did help round out my weaknesses, which helped my career trajectory overall. Looking back, I had some unusual roles including working on the creation of MetLife Investment Management – which was an unusual role at an insurance company, but provided invaluable experience and insight about growing organizations, fundraising, product offering and marketing. By taking jobs with the right firms applying the right strategies, I worked my way into roles where I learned even more than I would have expected, which furthered my career.

Would you advise any younger person to begin a career in CRE? I would absolutely recommend for any younger person to enter the commercial real estate industry. I think we have bright days ahead, as the asset class matures and we're on the verge of a few big changes which will make things more interesting and make things move at a faster pace. This includes tapping retail investors as large capital sources, leveraging data scientists to provide insights into new data sources and information, adopting new technology that improves CRE, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline processes and implementing new green building techniques that can change return and evaluation perspectives.

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