Episodes

During this episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate, Matt interviews Alan Gold, Executive Chairman of IQHQ, a start-up real estate company serving the life sciences industry. The episode serves as a continued exploration of different niches within the real estate business — serving the biotech/life sciences field requires unique knowledge and relationships and brings a special set of challenges as well as opportunities. Alan is a serial entrepreneur, having been a co-founder of Alexandria Real ...

MultiGreen made a big splash in early 2020 at the World Economic Forum’s 50th Annual Meeting in Davos, announcing its intention to build 40,000 units of attainable, sustainable, tech-enabled workforce housing apartments over the next ten years. In this episode, Matt talks with MultiGreen Founder and Chairman, Randy Norton, who is leading this new venture towards this audacious and important goal. MultiGreen is backed by 60 of the world’s wealthiest families via its partnership with i(x) investme...

Sheryl Palmer, Chairman and CEO of Taylor Morrison Home Corporation, joins as our second leading voice within the homebuilding industry (after Larry Webb, CEO of the New Home Company). Taylor Morrison is one of the nation’s top-ranked public homebuilders, following the company’s IPO in 2013, which Sheryl oversaw. With her college studies in special education and a career start in the sales and marketing department at McDonald’s, Sheryl shares how she came into the homebuilding business and how t...

Today Matt interviews David Schless, the President of the American Seniors Housing Association, to discuss the impact of COVID on seniors housing and his thoughts on the future of this business post-pandemic. The first hot spot for COVID in the US was at a nursing home in Washington State; the seniors housing industry has been at the forefront in responding to the crisis for its vulnerable residents and its workers on the front lines. David discusses the tremendous response of the industry and t...

In our Leading Voices in Real Estate season five premiere, Matt is rejoined by Tammy Jones, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Basis Investment Group, a real estate investment manager primarily focused on debt and structured equity strategies. Tammy was a participant on the Black Voices in Real Estate episode released in June, where she shared her experience as a Black woman in the real estate industry and the opportunities for change in racial equity in our business. Now four months late...

In honor of John Stewart’s memory, we are rebroadcasting his Leading Voices interview from December 2018. John passed away last week after a two-year battle with cancer. He was the founder of The John Stewart Company, a developer of low and mixed-income housing and the country’s 6th largest manager of affordable housing. John was a personal friend of Matt’s and an inspiration throughout his career. He views John as one of the Bay Area’s leading voices who was a tireless advocate across the range...

In honor of Gerald Hines’ legacy, we are rebroadcasting his interview from the spring of 2018. Mr. Hines passed away last week at the age of 95, having inspired generations of leaders in the real estate industry. He founded Hines in 1957 as a developer of office properties and has built some of the most iconic city landscapes in Houston, London, San Francisco, and other major cities around the globe. Hines is renowned for not only creating the highest quality buildings in the market but for part...

In this episode, Matt discusses the retail sector with Ken Bernstein, President and Chief Executive Officer of Acadia Realty Trust. Ken talks about the fundamental reworking of the sector due to what he terms the “Retail Armageddon,” a trend that was taking place well before Covid. They also discuss the long-term trends of retail and the additional impacts Covid may have on the retail sector. Acadia Realty Trust specializes in the acquisition, redevelopment, and management of retail properties w...

Conor Dougherty is an Economics and Housing Reporter at The New York Times who recently published Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America. His book explores the housing affordability crisis by weaving stories from the front lines of real estate development, investment, struggling families, government officials, and both NIMBYs and YIMBYs in California. This interview provides the perspective of an outside observer of the real estate industry thinking about the roots of the lack of adequate...

Andy Cohen is the Co-CEO of Gensler, the leading global design firm, which includes 6,300+ people networked across 50 offices and serving clients in 120+ countries. He joins Matt for another interview in our series of conversations on leadership in the real estate space amidst the Covid crisis. With his global perspective, Andy shares his thoughts on what the office landscape may look like both in our current constrained return to work and post-vaccine, the future and potential reinvention of ci...

This is a special episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate featuring conversations with six Black real estate leaders, each of whom speaks with Matt about their personal experiences and their thoughts on how our industry can address inequalities and systemic racism in our companies, our work in the built environment, and in the real estate sector broadly. Featured GuestsTammy K. Jones, Co-Founder & CEO | Basis Investment Group Since 2009, Tammy has served as both Co-Founder and Chief Executive...

Mary Ludgin is one of the best big-picture, strategic minds in the commercial real estate investment business. She is the Head of Global Research at Heitman, a global real estate investment management firm with $45.5 billion in assets under management. The initial interview focused mostly on the effects of COVID on the built environment, with a fascinating discussion on ripples of the COVID crisis post-vaccine, both from a national and global perspective. Recorded a week prior to the George Floy...

Amy Rose, President and CEO of Rose Associates, joins Matt for this week’s Leading Voices in Real Estate interview. Rose Associates is one of the largest, most storied apartment owners and managers in New York City with over $15 billion of assets under management and over 17,000 units owned or operated. Amy is a third-generation leader of this company originally founded by her grandfather and great uncle and is Rose Associate’s first female CEO. Most of the podcast is a deep dive into how her fi...

This week’s episode features a real estate legend: Leonard Wood, the Founder and Former CEO of Wood Partners, one of the nation’s leading apartment builders. Since Leonard founded Wood Partners in 1998, the company has developed over 79,000 homes with a combined value of more than $14.1 billion. Additionally, he is the Founder of the Leonard Wood Center for Real Estate Studies as a part of the Kenan-Flagler Business School. In this episode, Leonard talks about leadership lessons learned and impo...

As we enter the second month of the Covid-19 lockdown, Matt met with longtime industry colleague and friend Doug Bibby, President of the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), the leading trade association for the apartment industry. In addition to discussing the implications of the national crisis on the multifamily housing, Matt and Doug unwrap the significant evolution of the apartment industry over the past two decades. The conversation with Doug provides prior context of the multifami...

With so much uncertainty in the world due to Covid-19, Matt sat down (virtually) with Spencer Levy, Chairman, Americas Research & Senior Economic Advisor at CBRE, on March 24 to discuss the impact this crisis has across all sectors of commercial real estate. This is a special episode focused on Covid-19, versus our ongoing conversations which are geared towards leadership and the business of our guests. Spencer outlines the potential implications the pandemic has across various sectors including...

This week, Matt interviews Maria Hawthorne, President and CEO of PS Business Parks, where has been for over three decades. She started at the ground floor in a temporary position at Public Storage, the company’s parent, and moved up the ranks at PS Business Parks from running the East Coast, to Chief Administrative Officer, then President, and now to her current role as CEO in 2016. PS Business Parks is a REIT that acquires, develops, owns, and operates commercial properties, primarily multi-ten...

Recorded in front of an audience at a ULI Young Leaders event in Los Angeles, Matt sat down with Ricardo Pagan, Founder and CEO of Claridge Properties, a 100% minority-owned real estate investment and development firm. Born in the Dominican Republic, Ricardo emigrated to the U.S. when he was nine and is now a self-made entrepreneur in real estate under the age of 40. His path to success is different than other leaders featured on this podcast. Ricardo never attended a four-year college and sta...

This week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate features Alex Mehran Sr., the Chairman of the Board of Sunset Development Company and the immediate past Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sunset Development was founded in 1951 by Alex’s father who had emigrated from Iran, and today it is in its third generation of leadership, run by Alex’s son. Under Alex’s leadership, the company acquired and developed Bishop Ranch, a 585-acre mixed-use community in the Bay Area with be...

Ben Harris, CEO of Link Industrial Properties, Blackstone’s industrial sector operating platform, joins us for this week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate. In this episode, we dive into the drivers of the robust industrial sector, especially how the overall secular changes in retail, logistics, and distribution are driving a re-make of the industrial real estate business. We also discuss Blackstone’s approach to Link and its businesses in other real estate sectors, both from the investm...

With almost 40 years under his belt at Wells Fargo, Mark Myers is the bank’s Head of Commercial Real Estate. Under his leadership, Wells Fargo has been the #1 commercial real estate lender for the last 10 years. As a longtime leader in this space along with his upcoming retirement in February 2020, Mark shares his perspective on the vast changes in the real estate capital markets over this period and reflects on his career. He also expands on his outlook of the current markets and what he sees i...

Our first episode in 2020 features Amy Price, Managing Partner and Co-Head of the U.S. business for BentallGreenOak. After the recent merger between Bentall Kennedy and Green Oak, which she helped orchestrate, the company has grown to become a $48B real estate investment manager with a global footprint. Amy is a senior leader in the real estate investment management business. We talk about overall trends and challenges in this sector and how she has navigated and built her career, first at Morga...

David Brickman was appointed CEO of Freddie Mac in July 2019. He has been with the company for over two decades, previously serving as a longtime leader of its multifamily division. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Freddie’s sister GSE, have both been in government conservatorship for eleven years and there finally seems to be a feasible pathway back to private status. In this interview, David dives deep about his leadership of Freddie’s multifamily group and his rise within the organization based on...

As we wrap up Thanksgiving and head into the 2019 holiday season, we wanted to re-release an episode about hope, empowerment, and giving back with Cedric Bobo, Co-Founder of Project Destined. Project Destined is a social impact nonprofit that trains inner-city youth and military families to be active partners in sourcing and financing real estate investments. Students then receive a percentage of the profits from those investments in the form of scholarship funds. Cedric, who grew up in an unde...