Long before Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In movement began, women had been breaking barriers and shattering multifamily's glass ceiling. Indeed, they've taken our industry by storm by introducing innovative technologies, chasing competitive contracts, ushering in IPOs, chartering new initiatives, and redefining resident services.
To honor them and the important role women have played in our sector's success, MFE is celebrating 10 women who have excelled in their careers and are now revered as top thought-leaders guiding our industry. The women featured here came into the business at a time when stereotypes about women's labor efforts revolved around leaving the workforce for marriage and family. Yet, through their determination and dedication, these women have proved they can do it all, setting the stage for the next generation.
Most of the women portrayed here attribute their early success to women who came before them whom they admired and respected, whether it was a family member or a professional mentor. Since then, the tables have turned, and our subjects have become the women they once revered, role models whom the industry's up-and-coming leaders look to for guidance.
Though there's still room for improvement, trailblazers like these 10 women are responsible for the tremendous progress our industry has already made, providing a path for all the progress yet to come.
Lili Dunn
Chief Investment Officer, Bell Partners
Lili Dunn shocked the industry when she announced on stage at the MFE Conference in 2010 that she was leaving AvalonBay after 20 years for Bell Partners. Nearly five years later, Dunn has expansively stretched her wings in the entrepreneurial environment of the large private firm.
As Bell's CIO, Dunn has committed herself to growing the firm's investment platform, which typically delivers about $1 billion in transactions annually. Her recent accomplishments include the $1.8 billion sale of 64 properties with Bell joint-venture partner DRA Advisors, in only 60 days. Also under Dunn's leadership, Preqin, a data research firm for alternative assets, has ranked Bell Partners as having one of the most consistent top-performing funds in the world for the past two years.
"There are certainly opportunities for women to advance in our industry, but, as with most things, it usually doesn't come easily," says Dunn, who has worked for it from the start. She earned her real estate license at 18 and sold houses through college. She also started her own market-research firm and sold it at a profit at graduation.
Dunn also played an integral role early on at AvalonBay, assisting in an IPO that grew the firm's assets from $300 million to $12 billion and helping coordinate the merger of its predecessors, Avalon Properties and Bay Apartment Communities, in 1998.
Having experienced two major downturns, Dunn knows the business cycle changes quickly and one has to be ready for anything.
"Fiscal and geo-politcal events can dramatically affect our economy and industry very quickly," she says. "I take time to appreciate the good moments, because, in a blink, things can change."
Susan Ansel
President & CEO, Gables Residential
Since joining Gables Residential 28 years ago, Susan Ansel has had positions in acquisitions, development, and operations, taking the chance to learn new skills every step of the way.
"When I got to the point where I had been in a group long enough that I felt that I had learned as much as I could at that time, then I started saying [to myself], ‘Well, let's see if there's another opportunity,' " says Ansel.
Having that depth of knowledge has really carved out a niche for her in the workplace. Ansel knows the ins and outs of the entire business and isn't an expert at just one piece, though she believes having a strong foundation in a business's financial operations is vital to getting ahead.
"You don't have to be an accountant to be successful, but I do believe understanding how the business operates, and the financing, is a critical component," Ansel says.
However, one of the most important ways she elevated her career was through diving head first into real estate technology initiatives. At a time when the Internet was just gaining speed, Ansel was thrown into the pool and told to learn how to swim. Being on the forefront of an industry game changer, she was made an expert in a field no one else knew much about.
Ansel's newest opportunity to drive growth comes with Gables' recapitalization after Clarion Partners confirmed it was retaining the firm.
"We now have the opportunity to raise capital to take advantage of those opportunities," she says. "A lot of my focus for the next year or two will be helping lead the growth."
Deirdre Kuring
President, WinnResidential
For Deirdre Kuring, success has come from embracing every opportunity for growth, starting in her youth. She credits her mother's strength and determination as an inspiration and her three brothers with preparing her to deal with men in the business world.
As Kuring began her career, a "fantastic" manager at one of her first multifamily jobs helped her see that the unexpected career choice was a keeper.
"She opened my eyes to the industry. That's what launched my career, and I knew then that this was something I wanted to do," Kuring says.
Given her recent promotion to president of one of the largest multifamily property management firms in the country, it's obvious the decision was a good one. While the path to success included challenges and some tough managers, those were some of her most valuable learning experiences.
"I've [learned] a couple of lifelong lessons from people who were hard on me," Kuring says. "I adopted a philosophy that you can't dwell on things that you can't control, because that's being counterproductive."
Now, Kuring is one of the mentors passing on valuable lessons to the next generation of industry leaders. "When we bring people into the company, we give them a great training background, not just in how to do the mechanics of the job, but also in how to be a great leader," she says.
That empowerment will be a differentiator in the coming years as WinnCompanies continues to expand its national profile—a goal Kuring is dedicated to accomplishing.
Julie Smith
President, Bozzuto Management Co.
Julie Smith dubs her career in the multifamily industry "a series of fortunate events," but it's clear that more than luck has helped the 2013 MFE Executive of the Year thrive.
After working in various real estate fields, including marketing and property management, Smith went to work with Tom Bozzuto a year after he founded The Bozzuto Group in 1988. She never looked back.
"When I started, we had three properties and 750 units," she says. "Now, we have 200 properties and 50,000 units. It's an incredible team of like-minded people."
Chief on that team is Bozzuto himself, whom Smith describes as a great source of guidance. "Having a mentor to serve as a sounding board and provide advice is really important," Smith notes. "Women need to be very open about cultivating those relationships."
Open communication, about both the desire for career advancement and what's needed to accomplish it, is something Smith regards as critical for success.
"Managers want you to be successful, but they don't know what you need in your life. Women need to be really clear about what they need to be successful, and they need to ask for it; otherwise, you're in a guessing game," she says, adding that this is especially true for women who are juggling a developing career and a growing family.
It's certainly worked for Smith. Nowhere are the benefits of that direct and balanced approach more evident than in what she lists as her proudest accomplishments: helping to elevate The Bozzuto Group to its current stature and raising two confident and driven daughters.
MaryAnne Gilmartin
President & CEO, Forest City Ratner Cos.
"For a developer, you are what you build," says MaryAnne Gilmartin. And for a woman whose portfolio includes numerous significant projects, including The New York Times Building, the Barclays Center, and New York by Gehry (the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere), that characterization couldn't be more appropriate.
Gilmartin is a force to be reckoned with, as anyone who has worked with her has learned. She doesn't shy away from complicated projects and gamely pursues new challenges, such as when she convinced Forest City to chase The New York Times Building deal. The firm had never built a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan before and was even considered the underdog in the competition, but Gilmartin went toe-to-toe with the biggest builders in the city to win the contract.
"I don't think I ever got the memo that said I don't have a place at the table," she says of often being the only woman in the room. "I felt, based on the merits, I had something to contribute. I knew my business, why I was there, and what I was supposed to be doing."
Gilmartin's next challenge: the tallest modular building in America, in Brooklyn, N.Y. "It creates an unbelievably compelling model for cities to build multifamily, particularly affordable housing, at a price point and cost equation that allows us to do more of it in a way that's more effective," she says.
But she's not stopping there. Gilmartin hopes to shift the industry to more mixed-use buildings based on a work–live–play lifestyle.
"We could create a new generation of space that's really thoughtful, really beautiful, and highly functional," she says.
Cindy Clare
President, Kettler Management
In her 10 years at Kettler Management, Cindy Clare has led an enormous amount of growth for the firm.
Kettler started out as a small, Washington, D.C. area–based firm and when Clare joined the team, it only had 8,667 units in 37 communities. Today, the firm has over 24,000 units in 103 properties spread across the Mid-Atlantic from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
Like many people in this industry, Clare sort of fell into property management after taking a temporary position the summer after she graduated. When she decided it was a field she wanted to pursue, she turned to education.
"I was an administrative assistant for the head of the residential group at that time, and so I took some accounting classes. I took the RPA [Real Property Adminstrator]program. I went and worked on a property on my own time to learn the business so that I understood it. Then, I was promoted into a regional role," says Clare.
Now that she's made it to the top, she's paying back the favor by educating other students in property management. Clare currently serves as a faculty member for The Institute of Real Estate Management and sits on the Advisory Board of the Virginia Tech Program in Real Estate, which includes course work in residential property management.
"I like to see people be successful," says Clare.
Her next focus, beyond continuing her company's expansion, is the technological growth of the industry.
"The technology is there; it's not going away," she says. "But we need to control it versus it controlling us."
Ava Goldman
President, The Michaels Development Co.
Even before beginning her career, Ava Goldman had a powerful role model for succeeding in male-dominated fields: her mother.
"She got involved in engineering at a time when being in engineering and being a woman was extraordinarily unusual," Goldman says. "She was my absolute inspiration."
Perhaps due to that early influence, Goldman never hesitated to plunge into the business world despite obstacles or gender imbalances.
"I think there's a lot to be said for just plowing ahead," she says. "Instead of spending time thinking ,‘Why can't I do this?' think, ‘Let me find a way.' "
That determination has helped her take an intrepid approach throughout her career. After receiving her master's in urban planning, Goldman realized it was "more fun to do than to plan" and moved into development. Now, she's helping keep Michaels busy and competitive, despite funding constraints.
"The industry as a whole is facing real challenges right now in the sense that many of the programs that we know and love are under fire," Goldman says. To counteract that, the company is diversifying its efforts, by both expanding its affordable initiatives and turning to other markets, such as military and student housing and mixed-use development.
In all of these efforts, Goldman takes pride in helping to satisfy a fundamental need. "We're taking dilapidated housing and turning that into apartments that anyone would want to live in," she says. "I absolutely love it when as a result of what we do, it makes a difference in some small way in families' lives."
Terri Ludwig
President & CEO, Enterprise Community Partners
Terri Ludwig has spent most of her career trying to bring Wall Street to Main Street, as she likes to say.
Starting out in global investments at Merrill Lynch, Ludwig went back to school at Harvard, seeking to bring more social and financial capital to communities and investors. And at Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit provider of development capital for affordable housing and community rebuilding, she's found exactly that.
"Our commitment is making sure that every person in our country has a place to call home in a safe, affordable, and vibrant community," says Ludwig, who says her firm expects to deliver $3 billion to $4 billion in capital this year.
One of the largest efforts Ludwig heads is Enterprise's commitment to serving one million families by 2020 as a down payment on its commitment to end homelessness and home insecurity.
Ludwig spends a lot of her time trying to reach out to a new audience of investors by writing articles for The Huffington Post and LinkedIn. It's about getting more people, particularly millennials, to see that an investment in the community is an investment in the future—a "pay it forward" mentality.
A diversity of viewpoints is Ludwig's key to making a large task manageable. By including different perspectives from various backgrounds of age, race, or position, Ludwig finds the outcomes are more creative and inspired.
"We do believe it's solvable, but it won't be done overnight," she says.
Amy Anthony
President & CEO, Preservation of Affordable Housing
With a long list of accomplishments in public service and the private sector, Amy Anthony, inducted into the Affordable Housing Finance Hall of Fame in 2011, has built an impressive legacy in the industry.
After college, a job at a Massachusetts start-up that focused on demand-side subsidies stimulated her career, and she quickly found success in the field. In 1982, Anthony was selected by then–Gov. Mike Dukakis to serve as the secretary of the executive office of communities and development, which she credits with helping shape her career.
"He gave me responsibility and expected me to carry it out, and it was a wonderful level of trust that allowed me to grow a great deal," Anthony recalls.
However, as Anthony moved from the government to industry, she found the level of respect didn't necessarily transfer. "It was kind of a brutal shock," she says. "I managed that bad situation by getting out; when I got out, I started my own consulting and development company, and I've never gone back."
At Preservation of Affordable Housing, Anthony has helped provide homes for those in need and revitalize urban communities, overcoming limited resources and misconceptions about affordable housing along the way. She's also worked to ensure that the company maintains a collaborative and positive culture, which is at the top of her mind as she plans to retire from POAH in June to become more involved in international housing projects.
"It really makes you think about the important values of the place, what you have worked to create, and that's been very satisfying."
Sherry Brown
Chief Financial Officer, Mill Creek Residential
Success is about more than individual efforts—it's built on the work of an entire team. That's the perspective of Sherry Brown, who likens the atmosphere of the business world to that of team sports, an experience she says helped prepare her for a business career.
"I think a lot of men grow up in that environment, playing on teams, and I think that comes into the office," she says. "That helped me understand the competitive nature of business—setting and achieving goals."
Brown has always embraced that team mind-set in her career and emphasized ensuring the success of a group rather than simply touting her own accomplishments. She notes that she's seen rewards come from this approach, including multiple promotions and growth opportunities throughout her career that she describes as some of her proudest professional moments.
With her team-oriented approach, it's no surprise that one of Brown's key priorities is encouraging the success of the people around her. Mill Creek is actively working to bring more women into the development ranks, where the company has found that they often prosper, and is continuing to focus on employee recruitment and retention.
"The success of our company really depends on getting the best people out there," she says. "We work hard to create an environment where people can thrive. Part of doing that is to really understand what those people need and what you can do to support them."
Spoken like a true team player.