In an ever-changing world, Jackson has it all figured out.

Over a career spanning 25 years, appraiser Deborah Jackson has worked for some of the world's biggest businesses and financial institutions.

A managing director at full service accounting firm, Weiser Realty, Jackson was involved in DRA Advisor's $1.1 billion acquisition of shopping center owners, Price Legacy, in December 2004. It was a deal that involved more than 35 malls in several different states and $500 million in financing.

Her client list includes the likes of Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros and UBS, not to mention pension fund, CalPers, REITs such as Trizec, and lenders that include Wachovia, PNC and Bank of America.

She's among the most sought-after retail appraisers in the nation and works with all of the leading global players, including Westfield, Simon and General Properties.

Jackson was also been a consultant to several of the various entities involved with retail development at the World Trade Center site and continues to play a role in current redevelopment plans there.

Yet for all her talent and experience tackling some of the most complex financial analysis and transactions in the real estate business, Jackson is the furthest thing from a number cruncher. Rather's she's a people person who discovered quite by chance she had a knack for numbers.

A Boston native, she studied English and music at Case Western University in Ohio then came to New York with dreams of becoming a musician. Instead, she landed a job at Landauer Realty, then one of the biggest real estate advisory firms in the country, and began a career that would take her to all corners of the globe assessing everything from multifamily developments and office towers, to shopping centers and hotels.

"Landauer hired me because I [had an English degree and] could write," recalled Jackson. "I wrote reports, proofed brochures, did research ... and found that I was really learning about the business because I was actually finding the stuff intriguing."

It was the late 80s and Jackson was witness to a sea-change in the real estate industry as the cyclical ups and downs of the 70s and early 80s began to ease into what looked like a gentle, solid climb upwards. She was surrounded by some of the finest young brains in the business that would ultimately go on to lead global conglomerates themselves and, as she likes to say, "It was a locomotive that was moving--I could be the engine or the caboose."

She decided to take an appraisal course and work towards a Member of the Appraisal Institute designation, then took a certificate in real estate studies at NYU and started working towards her MBA.

Armed with her new credentials, Jackson began representing several firms primarily involved in the retail industry, including the Rouse Company--in which Trizec-Hahn then held a major share and that would ultimately be sold for $7 billion to General Growth Properties--the then fledgling Simon corporation, and US newcomer, Westfield.

The young appraiser quickly began to make a name for herself not only for astute and pinpoint valuations that owners and developers counted on, but also for her honesty and integrity in an industry that has suffered its fair share of scandals.

"No one likes bad news,' said Jackson, "but my philosophy has always been that honesty is the best policy. I've found that clients would rather deal with it than have it dressed up."

While her profession isn't an exact science, Jackson said, "My clients are real world, sophisticated people who understand the market. There's a lot of objectivity, for example, if I say a property is worth $100 and it sells for $99 or $101, then that's a responsible band. But the day I value an asset that ultimately sells for 10% less than I valued it, is the day I go elsewhere."

While Jackson was fast rising through the ranks of the Landauer Group's valuation division, the firm's parent company, the Netherland's based Aegon, was veering more towards insurance and, in 1998, decided to offload Landauer in a sale to Grubb & Ellis. Jackson was looking forward to the challenge of integrating her unit into the firm, but the honeymoon would prove to be a short one as Grubb & Ellis stumbled towards near collapse.

Jackson was decidedly unhappy by this point and began looking for a way out for what was left of her Landauer team. In 2003, she met with Doug Philip, a senior partner at Weiser, one of the biggest accounting firms in the city and one which had grasped the benefits to be achieved from developing specialty practices long before that became popular among accountants.

"I immediately felt that they had the level of integrity that I was looking for," Jackson said of Weiser. "They were a regional accounting firm and we shared many of the larger New York clients, such as Trump, JP Morgan, Lehman Bros. From a client point of view, we were in a similar world. Although they were a vegetable and we were a fruit, we were of the same quality."

In January 2004, Weiser inked a deal to acquire the appraisal group that allowed Grubb and Ellis to retain the Landauer name. Weiser was in the midst of its own evolution into specialist groups that focused the skill sets of its various professionals to practice niches covering every spectrum of the real estate industry and they signed Jackson on as managing director leading the valuation and consulting practice.

It was a win-win for them both, allowing Weiser to further diversify its specialty niche practices and giving Jackson and her team the weight and resources of a respected and well known firm.

Said Jackson, "I really wanted the platform that Weiser was able to offer. If a client goes out and buys a large pool of real estate assets, we have all of the resources to look at sales, general ledgers, due diligence reviews and litigation support. It makes us all look better because we are able to offer this expanded menu of services."

As the company continues with an expansion strategy that is likely to see some more mergers and acquisitions of peripheral firms offering various specialties that Weiser can add to its menu of services, Jackson herself is finding more and more than she's being called upon to speak on compliance with international accounting standards aimed at making the industry more transparent.

And while there's already concern among owners that there will be a shortage of professionals able to compete in the field, Jackson said Weiser is poised to compete for its share of the fair value consulting business that's bound to result from the changes.

With her firm if a "prudent growth mode" Jackson is predicting another busy year in the hotel sector and is keeping a close eye on the transition currently underway in the grocery store sector as the traditional stores attempt to figure out a way to win back customers drawn to the organic Wholefoods-type concepts and to discounters such as WalMart and BJs.

"That's what intrigues me about the retail business," said Jackson. "It's ever changing."