The Top 100 Women in Real Estate.

Ruth A. Agnese, MAI 

Senior Vice President

Appraisers and Planners, Inc.

Agnese has been called a renaissance woman of real estate. She is a top player and performer at Appraisers and Planners, Inc., a nationally recognized firm specializing in valuation of real estate holdings for large estates as well as tax appeals, where her clients include major law firms, developers, financial and not-for-profit institutions. (She is particularly proud of her recent role in appraising The Empire State Building.) One of the youngest women to ever achieve the MAI designation, she is also one of the few women appraisers to provide expert testimony in legal proceedings. Agnese is currently president of AREW and second vice president of The Metropolitan New York Chapter of The Appraisal Institute. Considering her own personality -- warm, witty and decisive -- it is appropriate that Agnese loves the distinctive "personalities" of properties and market segments in New York. Her caveats for the future? Remember the past and never underestimate the power of new technology.

Debra C. Allee

AICP President and CEO 

Allee King Rosen & Fleming Inc.

Allee has more than 30 years of experience as a planner and manager of urban development, environmental and transportation projects.

As president of Allee King Rosen & Fleming, which she co-founded in 1981 in mid-career, her assignments reflect a veritable "who's who" of sites and organizations: 42nd Street Redevelopment Project; the Coliseum site; Atlantic Terminal and Brooklyn Center; West Haven Urban Renewal Area near Yankee Stadium; Route 9A reconstruction; LIRR East Side Access Project; Belt Parkway bridges reconstruction; Queens Subway Options Study; Tuxedo Park Estates in Orange, NY; Culloden Point on Block Island Sound -- among many others.

She was also director of the Ellis Island Oral History Project. Allee believes the biggest challenges the industry faces involves keeping up with rapidly changing technology and finding a way to continue to grow without clogging the city's infrastructure and damaging its character.

Amy S. Appelbaum

Assistant VP/ Real Estate

NY Economic Development Corporation

Appelbaum loves the complexities of real estate in New York, her hometown, and that there is a tangible product at the end of the deal. Deal she does -- in contract negotiations, the public approval process, environmental and zoning analysis and financial structuring -- as project manager for a portfolio of development transactions at the NYC Economic Development Corporation. She also drafts, issues and analyzes REPs including Digital NYC - Wired to the World, which provided marketing funding to create high-tech districts in all of the five boroughs. She has a solid background in real estate banking and finance achieved through positions at The Bank of Nova Scotia, The Fuji Bank  Limited and Southmark/Envicon Capital Corp. Projecting the need for "smart" buildings and Internet-ready space, Appelbaum speculates that finding and creating these spaces, without destroying the architectural splendor of New York City, to be the industry's greatest challenge in the coming five years.

Ronni Lynn Arougheti

President

Heron, Ltd.

For Arougheti, the most exciting thing about real estate is that no two days are ever the same and no two problems share the same solution. An attorney specializing in real estate law and finance, Arougheti founded Heron, Ltd. on a dining room table and, in 10 years, grew the firm to over 50 employees and a full service commercial and residential brokerage division. Arougheti has years of daily involvement in solving building management problems and an expertise in property management and co-op/condo law reflected in the more than 95 properties her firm manages. In 1998, she received the Residential Management Executive of the Year Award from REBNY, which honored her again in 1999 with the "Shining Star" Award. She believes the greatest challenge for the industry is competing in a new dimension, the Internet, and finding the flexibility to change a traditional "bricks and mortar" orientation to "clicks".

Deborah S. Beck

Executive Vice President

Real Estate Board of New York, Inc.

Beck is a woman of influence on behalf of the real estate industry at City Hall, in Albany and Washington, D.C. and the first woman to rise to a leadership position at REBNY, the industry's leading trade association. As executive vice president, she oversees REBNY's government affairs, research and policy activities along with administering the various membership divisions. Beck played a major role in developing new sections of the NYC Building Code for life and fire safety; accessibility for the disabled; and a section on earthquake provisions, most of which were forged in a politically charged atmosphere. At REBNY, she has helped to give individual industry sectors distinctive channels for shaping and communicating their positions and been the prime mover, requiring considerable political skill and economic sophistication, in the design and distribution of the Cooperative Sales Report. Beck currently serves on the Commissioner's Advisory Council at the New York City Department of Buildings and NYC Departme nt of Environmental Protection.

C. Elizabeth Behnke Vice President

Investor Relations Starwood Capital Group

In Behnke's view, real estate has evolved from a fragmented industry with imperfect knowledge to a global marketplace in which capital flows play an increasingly important role. Five years ago, she transitioned from the transaction side of the business to capital raising and investor relations for Starwood Capital Group, a private investment management firm. At a time when many observers believed that opportunity funds had played themselves out, she successfully raised $830 million in a mezzanine debt and equity fund and $530 million in a real estate equity fund from institutional and high net worth clients. Prior to joining Starwood, she held executive positions at Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, Jones Lang Wootton and J.P. Morgan. As real estate becomes much more of a global commodity, Behnke believes investors will be required to be more attuned to movements in the broader capital markets and that emerging trends in Asian, European and Latin American markets will open new avenues for investment .

Marylou Berk

Director of Operations

Softbank International Ventures

As corporate vice president of Ziff-Davis, Berk directed a global Real Estate, Construction and Facilities operation, led the global Y2K effort and managed the Information Technology and Human Resources departments worldwide. Among her career achievements: completing 900 Third Avenue and filling the building with all of its first tenants and simultaneously managing huge bi-coastal projects such as relocating ZiffDavis's NY headquarters while building TV studios, production, editing, office space and newsrooms in San Francisco. Recently promoted, she heads operations, Lynn Arougheti

President

Heron, Ltd.

For Arougheti, the most exciting thing about real estate is that no two days are ever the same and no two problems share the same solution. An attorney specializing in real estate law and finance, Arougheti founded Heron, Ltd. on a dining room table and, in 10 years, grew the firm to over 50 employees and a full service commercial and residential brokerage division. Arougheti has years of daily involvement in solving building management problems and an expertise in property management and co-op/condo law reflected in the more than 95 properties her firm manages. In 1998, she received the Residential Management Executive of the Year Award from REBNY, which honored her again in 1999 with the "Shining Star" Award. She believes the greatest challenge for the industry is competing in a new dimension, the Internet, and finding the flexibility to change a traditional "bricks and mortar" orientation to "clicks".

Deborah S. Beck

Executive Vice President

Real Estate Board of New York, Inc.

Beck is a woman of influence on behalf of the real estate industry at City Hall, in Albany and Washington, D.C. and the first woman to rise to a leadership position at REBNY, the industry's leading trade association. As executive vice president, she oversees REBNY's government affairs, research and policy activities along with administering the various membership divisions. Beck played a major role in developing new sections of the NYC Building Code for life and fire safety; accessibility for the disabled; and a section on earthquake provisions, most of which were forged in a politically charged atmosphere. At REBNY, she has helped to give individual industry sectors distinctive channels for shaping and communicating their positions and been the prime mover, requiring considerable political skill and economic sophistication, in the design and distribution of the Cooperative Sales Report. Beck currently serves on the Commissioner's Advisory Council at the New York City Department of Buildings and NYC Departme nt of Environmental Protection.

C. Elizabeth Behnke Vice President

Investor Relations Starwood Capital Group

In Behnke's view, real estate has evolved from a fragmented industry with imperfect knowledge to a global marketplace in which capital flows play an increasingly important role. Five years ago, she transitioned from the transaction side of the business to capital raising and investor relations for Starwood Capital Group, a private investment management firm. At a time when many observers believed that opportunity funds had played themselves out, she successfully raised $830 million in a mezzanine debt and equity fund and $530 million in a real estate equity fund from institutional and high net worth clients. Prior to joining Starwood, she held executive positions at Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, Jones Lang Wootton and J.P. Morgan. As real estate becomes much more of a global commodity, Behnke believes investors will be required to be more attuned to movements in the broader capital markets and that emerging trends in Asian, European and Latin American markets will open new avenues for investment .

Marylou Berk

Director of Operations

Softbank International Ventures

As corporate vice president of Ziff-Davis, Berk directed a global Real Estate, Construction and Facilities operation, led the global Y2K effort and managed the Information Technology and Human Resources departments worldwide. Among her career achievements: completing 900 Third Avenue and filling the building with all of its first tenants and simultaneously managing huge bi-coastal projects such as relocating ZiffDavis's NY headquarters while building TV studios, production, editing, office space and newsrooms in San Francisco. Recently promoted, she heads operations, including global real estate, for Softbank, the parent company of Ziff-Davis. Berk's career spans more than 20 years of managing billion dollar budgets. NACORE named her "Real Estate Executive of the Year" in 1998. In 1999, she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor Award for Outstanding Citizenship. Berk foresees the biggest challenge facing the industry as getting the industry and its professionals operating in an Internet environment.

Margaret S. Blakey

Vice President

Real Estate Finance Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Blakey oversees Goldman, Sachs's floating rate loan program, originating commercial mortgage loans from $50-$500 million to be structured and sold as investment grade CMBSs. Working with the commercial mortgage trading desk, she also originates highly levered loans. Blakey believes what makes a project successful is getting out of the office and walking the asset, shopping the mall, staying in the hotel room, driving the competition. Before joining Goldman, Sachs, she was director of Principal Transactions Group at Credit Suisse First Boston and a vice president of Eastdil Realty. This Harvard MBA foresees interrelated challenges for the industry. First, if real estate continues to appreciate in value, property owners will need to build value by managing well vs. buying or building well. Secondly, a slow growth climate for publicly owned real estate companies will mean difficulty in attracting new capital. In five years, she believes we will have fewer, larger REITs.

Susan Boyle, AlA, TIDA, ASID 

Managing Partner

Media Studio Director

HLW 

Throughout the course of her 20-year career, Boyle has become an expert on the unique challenge of putting people and space together to create environments that maximize their potential. AT HLW, where she was the first female partner and first (and, so far, only) female managing partner, Boyle directs HLW's Media Studio. The Studio focuses on architecture and interior design for broadcast and entertainment facilities, new media, advertising, public relations, retail and fashion. Her experience includes projects for About.com, Agency.com, Disney ABC Studios, Omnicom, Nickelodeon, Univision, WNET, McGraw Hill Companies, The New York Times and Murdoch Magazines, among others. Boyle is energized by the connection of real estate with architecture and how understanding architecture can effect and enhance a real estate decision and vice versa. She foresees anticipating how much technology and the Internet will influence real estate as an upcoming challenge for the industry.

Eileen Brumback

Partner

King & Spalding

Brumback is a partner at King & Spalding, a full service law firm with offices in Atlanta, Houston, Washington, DC and New York that was recently ranked by an American Lawyer survey as one of the top 50 law firms in the world. Brumback represents domestic and foreign banks, credit companies, investment banks, REITs and other institutions in a wide range of debt and equity investment and business combination transactions in the real estate sector. She is also actively involved with foreign investors in acquiring income properties throughout the United States. She believes one of the primary challenges for the modem real estate owner is developing a sustainable approach to the real estate capital markets and an effective financing strategy, since the cost of capital is a key component of the business. In the long run, successful real estate companies will be those able to take advantage of the myriad of capital sources available.

Jennifer L. Carey

Founder and President

JLC Environmental Consultants, Inc.

Carey founded JLC in 1987 at the age of 24 as its sole employee. Early assignments included testing air quality at the New Stock Exchange, New York Public Library and 666 Fifth Avenue. Today, Carey coordinates growth objectives and customer service initiatives within the firm's departments for its growing list of commercial, residential and public sector clients. JLC was environmental consultant for Sheraton during the St. Regis Hotel's renovation, which paved the way for success with other clients such as the Pierpont Morgan Library, Columbia University, New York University, The Carlyle Hotel and other tony New York buildings, JLC recently acquired an environmental training company in Albany, NY, a strategic move to expand regional and international services. She anticipates that the stock market will determine the industry's biggest challenges: lack of space for expanding and growing businesses in the New York Metro Area or too much space if there's a major correction.

Vivian Chavez, AlA

Partner, President/COO

HLW Design/Build, LLC 

Chavez, with 20 years of integrated design/construction expertise in project delivery methodology, considers real estate to be one of the strongest business drivers shaping the future of industry, essential to the core business decisions made by the corporate world. As president of HLW Design/Build, she has had the opportunity to realize a very personal goal: envisioning the architect as the "master builder" responsible for bringing to fruition client goals for their facility from initial inception to post move-in, working with a diverse team of real estate professionals. Her experience includes projects for GE Global, MetLife, Empire State Development Corp., GreenPoint Bank, The Engelhard Corporation, New York Stock Exchange and Grain Communications, among others. She envisions an upcoming challenge as using HLW's expertise in consolidation and reconfiguration to provide perspective to clients when the real estate cycle reaches its low point again, as it did in 1990.

Nora C. Coffey

Regional Director

The Carlson Group

Born and raised in what is now known as Silicon Valley, Coffey has 17 years experience in design, architecture, engineering and construction management, loves the interaction behind a deal and the sense of the successful delivery and completion of a project. At Carlson, which focuses on the converging technology markets of telecommunications, financial services and broadcast entertainment, she has primary responsibility for identifying opportunities for the design and building of critical facilities and is responsible for strategic account planning, client relationship development, definition of client budgets and goals, project coordination with operations and management staff and co-management of Carlson's marketing function. Coffey previously worked with Tishman Interiors Corporation as director of business development and for Bovis (now Bovis-Lend Lease). She anticipates successfully valuing, incorporating and utilizing new telecommunications and technologies, and the need for physical space to be contin ually more flexible and conceptual, as the industry's biggest challenge.

Kate Coburn

Director of Retail Services

Cushman & Wakefield

Having planned a different career, Cobum's love of real estate began with a quirk of fate: a temporary job agency placed her at Rockefeller Center in the middle of the tree-lighting season. That serendipity led to positions as assistant director of marketing, director of retail leasing, vice president-retail leasing (after leaving the company for a time) and consultant for Rockefeller Center. Coburn also served as asset manager/ director of marketing at Park Tower Realty Corp. and as a vice president of the then Edward S. Gordon Co. Today, at Cushman & Wakefield, she provides consulting and brokerage services including tenant and landlord representation, master plan development, expansion and disposition strategies. Recent assignments included a retail master plan for the Walt Disney organization in Anaheim, CA and Plaza Del Mar in San Diego County for Clarion Partners. Coburn is profiled in the book 11 Commandments of Wildly Successful Women and the first woman recipient of the YM/ WREA "Senior Real Estate Man/Woman of the Year" award.

Faith Hope Consolo

Chairman

Garrick-Aug Worldwide

Competition in retail brokerage grows -- and grows fiercer -- each year, but Consolo continues to reign as a kingpin player. Consolo is known not only for the volume, size and significance of her transactions, but also for her extensive knowledge of storefronts from Madison Avenue to West Broadway. To Consolo, each stretch of space is part of a larger neighborhood -- a visionary approach that has helped retailers emerge as major players in New York City. Consolo loves becoming involved in the evolution of a location into a better and brighter environment for those who live, work and visit there and achieved those goals as management consultant on the transformation of Times Square, Flatiron and Penn Station. She regards serving as retail consultant to the 42nd Street Redevelopment Corporation as one of her greatest career achievements. Among many other honors, in 1999 alone, she was named Woman of the Year by ABO, a first-ever for the association, and one of "New York's 100 Most Influential Women In Business " by Crain's New York Business.

Barbara Corcoran

Chairman and Founder

The Corcoran Group

She started out of her apartment with a $1,000 investment. Today, The Corcoran Group is Manhattan's largest privately owned real estate firm, a 10-office operation with over 450 sales agents and $1.5 billion in yearly sales. Always quick to spot -- or create -- a trend, Corcoran's company took off in the 70's with the market evolution from apartment rentals to ownership. Her reputation, forged then, for selling high-end luxury properties, perseveres to this day. A true innovator/ entrepreneur, her Corcoran Report has become a bible of the industry. Her special one-day/one-price sales have become legend. One of the first real estate firms online, Corcoran's website generated over $90 million in sales in 1999. Named one of "New York's 100 Most Influential Women In Business" by Crain's New York Business, Corcoran believes the internet is changing the real estate business faster than anything else in the world and the only sites that will succeed will have global reach and simplify the customer's experience.

Anne B. Covell

Director, Research Consulting

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

Covell believes that because we constantly design, build, change, eliminate and create buildings everywhere and for every conceivable use, real estate is one of our greatest achievements. Monitoring and forecasting trends that impact those buildings at the metropolitan, regional and national level is Covell's forte. At Cushman & Wakefield, her department profiles 47 markets using office and industrial product development trends, leasing and sales transactions, demographic and economic analyses and forecasts. Prior to joining Cushman & Wakefield, Covell was national director of research at Rockwood Realty Associates, a founding partner and principal of The Praedium Group and vice president of research at Security Pacific Realty Advisors. Covell considers her greatest career achievement to be building an investment research department that became a core capability in both pitching and conducting business. She foresees the ability to access, interpret and use internet-based data in the new economy, high-tech wo rld, as a particular challenge for the industry in the next few years.

Jamie K. Covello

Executive Director

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

This dynamic executive director of Cushman & Wakefield (she received the company's Breaking All Barriers production award for four years running) has based her career on providing her clients a distinctly consultative, strategic approach to delivering real estate services. Since 1989. Covello has represented multi-national corporations such as Pitney Bowes Inc., Sunbeam Corporation, Scott Paper Company, General Reinsurance Corporation and Honeywell Inc. in either a national/global exclusive or preferred vendor relationship. Other clients include American Express, Credit Suisse, First Boston Corporation, Ernst & Young, Swiss Re America and Kimberly Clark in addition to numerous e-commerce new business ventures requiring a fast track real estate process. Loving the independence and control she has over her own success in real estate, Covello, doing much of her work from home, achieved her highest production in each of the years that she became a mother. She foresees the industry's adjustment to the Internet as crucial to the way information and services are provided to clients.

Dorothy R. Cunningham

Chief Executive Officer

Commercial Mortgage

Securities Association (CMSA)

The stimulation of the real estate industry -- always something new to learn, someone else to meet -- combined with the challenge of bringing multiple skills to the table, are driving forces in Cunningham's 25-year, broad-based, commercial real estate career. As CEO of CMSA -- the voice of the industry -- she brilliantly realizes the organization's mission of fostering growth, liquidity and efficiency of the commercial real estate mortgage capital markets. Previously managing director of loan production and commercial origination at CIGNA Investment Management, she began her career at The Prudential Insurance Company of America, and then worked at Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. This 1998 president of NNCREW (National Network of Commercial Real Estate Women) predicts many challenges ahead: continuing globalization, volatility in other parts of the world, the growing influence of capital markets and e-commerce phenomenon.

Patricia DeGennaro

Director, Strategic Planning and Implementation

Real Estate Development

New York City Economic

Development Corporation

DeGennaro oversees EDC's $800 million real estate portfolio and reports on 268 projects to senior management and city officials. In addition to initiating and implementing departmental strategies and procedures, managing the corporate team and supervising development of the internal project management database, she individually manages a $40 million portfolio of projects for sale or lease in New York's five boroughs. Prior to joining EDC in 1998, DeGennaro spent three years with USAID and two years with the Peace Corps, both times based in Albania. In 1999, DeGennaro was named as a Fellow of the International Women's Forum Leadership Foundation, which aims to increase pressure on the glass ceiling through development of a mentor culture among women. Her love of the real estate industry is based on the opportunity to develop skills in leadership, negotiation and compromise that are needed to bring people together toward a common goal.

Cydney C. Donnell

Managing Director

European Investors Incorporated

Having joined EII in 1986, Donnell considers herself fortunate to have started her career as the real estate business was undergoing tremendous change. In a relatively short time, she experienced a full real estate cycle and has since watched the business become more institutionalized, securitized and consolidated as we also move toward increased globalization.

Donnell considers personal integrity to be a professional's most valuable asset, and as a managing director of a REIT portfolio, she is entrusted with fiduciary responsibility for assets of clients -- more than $2 billion in real estate securities on behalf of U.S. pension funds, foundations, endowments and high net worth clients.

Donnell is one of the most recognized analysts in the industry, regularly quoted by and appearing in business and financial media. In the future, as information becomes even more readily available, she foresees a need for increasing emphasis on customer service on all levels.

Roxanne Donovan

President

Great Ink Communications, Ltd.

Donovan, one of the New York metropolitan area's leading public relations executives, formed Great Ink in 1992. The firm focuses exclusively on real estate and related services. She brings more than a decade of combined experience in journalism, expert media relations and public relations strategic planning to the industry. Ms. Donovan has extensive journalism experience. A former New York Daily News business reporter covering real estate and economic development, Ms. Donovan also served as Senior Editor of Commercial Property News and Editor of Real Estate Weekly. She also reported and wrote for consumer magazines and daily newspapers around the Northeast, including the Syracuse Herald-Journal. Prior to forming Great Ink, Ms. Donovan served as Director of Corporate Communications for the Edward S. Gordon Company, Inc., one of the country's largest commercial real estate concerns. At ESG, she directed both local and national media relations campaigns and was responsible for the development and implementation of strategies to announce major transactions and corporate developments. Ms. Donovan is a graduate of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she focused her studies on newspaper journalism, marketing and mass media techniques.

Erica R. Forman, Esq.

PartnerRobinson Silverman

Pearce Aronsohn & Berman LLP 

This former assistant attorney general with the New York State Department of Law enjoys the breadth and diversity of the people who "do" real estate and how each individual approaches the business from a unique perspective with a unique philosophy. Forman specializes in government-assisted and affordable housing development, residential and commercial condominium and cooperative project development and conversions of existing properties. Her major clients at Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman include developers, lending institutions and contractors. In her previous career, Forman helped establish the St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation of Brooklyn where she remains involved as counsel. She also worked for the New York City Office of Neighborhood Government. She considers the affordable housing aspect of her practice, where she has had the good fortune to represent several imaginative and creative developers and lenders, to be an especially satisfying career achievement, one in which "gives everyone associated with the project reason to be proud."

Barbara S. Fox

President Fox Residential

Group,LLC

After more than 25 years as a residential broker, Fox has never been bored in the business, thriving on change, challenge and the differences in every deal. In 1989, in a down market, Fox created Fox Residential Group as a boutique real estate finn specializing in upscale residential properties on the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan. Over time, the firm grew to 25 brokers, added the downtown market and rental, corporate relocation and investment sales divisions. Fox tallies up impressive sales for a boutique firm - $80 million on 88 properties in 1999 according to a 2000 Crain's New York Business' survey of NYC's Largest Residential Real Estate Brokerages. Fox received REBNY's Henry Forster Memorial Award, which honors an outstanding record of achievement in residential real estate, in 1997. She believes the industry will undergo massive changes in the next five years including a total change, driven by technology, in the way we do business.

Sherry Frankel

President

Caran Properties, Inc.

To Frankel, real estate is at the heart of the action, a driving force of New York's growth and prosperity. Frankel herself is at the center of the vortex, involved in management, leasing, refinancing, construction, conversions and investing. Her firm, Caran Properties, specializes in residential property management, sales and rentals and retail and commercial leasing. Frankel also serves as vice president of AFA Asset Services Inc., a real estate investment and asset management firm where she focuses on analysis, acquisitions and management and has been involved with financings in-excess of $200 million. This two-time recipient of ABO's Emma Lazarus Award, believes the biggest challenges to real estate in the next five years depend on who's talking. To property managers, it might be restoring credibility; to brokers, how long the frenzied demand for space will last; for developers, finding new locations and projects. The overriding theme? A tight market and lack of space.

Lizann Galbreath

Managing Partner

Galbreath & Company

Galbreath, a private equity investment firm, seeks to acquire significant ownership positions in carefully selected companies with substantial potential for longterm growth as well as unique real estate development and investment opportunities. Galbreath was previously managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle where she worked with the Client Services Group in development of new business. She also served on LaSalle Partners Board of Directors and as chair of their Management Services Group. As chairman and CEO of The Galbreath Company, she positioned the company into a merger with LaSalle Partners in 1997, which enabled accessing the public equity markets through a successful IPO. As changes in the industry accelerate, Galbreath's personal challenge is to stay ahead of the curve She predicts appropriately integrating the Internet into the way we do business to the benefit of owners, investors, brokers and users is the industry biggest, foreseeable challenge.

Joan Gerner

Senior Vice President

Director of Preservation Division

Bovis Lend Lease/LMB, Inc.

A trained architect, construction manager and historic preservationist, Gerner has over 21 years of senior experience managing renovation, restoration and new construction including cultural, corporate, transportation, medical, commercial and residential facilities. LMB's Preservation Division, which she directs, provides preservation technology support to clients and architects, focusing on restoration, preservation and modernization of historic buildings, many of which make a statement and contribution to New York City. Her experience includes work for the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Tweed Courthouse, The Smithsonian Institution, Grand Central Terminal Revitalization, Carnegie Hall Restoration, JFK International Airport Capital Redevelopment Program and Rockefeller University, Scholars Residence. While with the General Services Administration, Gerner's preservation/restoration projects included federal courthouses, office buildings and FDR's Hyde Park home. A commissioner at New York City Landmarks Preservatio n Commission, Gerner foresees keeping up with changes in the market and new technologies in construction as the industry's biggest challenges.

Bernice Giscombe

Vice President

Citigroup

Real estate has been the first love of Giscombe since growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn where her father owned several small, multifamily properties and the local candy store. A West Indian immigrant, her father knew how difficult it was for African Americans to find affordable housing, so his rents were always below market. Twenty years ago, Giscombe was recruited by Citibank to participate in their Executive Training Program in the Real Estate Division. Today, as senior lender for Citigroup's Community Development Lending business, Giscombe works to create and preserve housing units for minority communities. She considers her biggest career achievement to be leading the Westchester Housing Implementation Commission in the completion of a Fair Share affordable housing plan for the 40+ municipalities in the county. Giscombe believes the biggest challenge facing the real estate industry is how to provide affordable housing in the inner city.

Jane Gladstein

Executive Vice President

Corcoran Group

When Gladstein accepted her first job in real estate appraisal, she had no idea what a vast, exciting and challenging career lay ahead. After 23 years in the business -- and involvement in over $5 billion in housing units -- she still finds it a joy to work in an industry where every building touches some-one's world. Gladstein recently merged her development consulting entity, Jane Gladstein Real Estate, into Corcoran Group Marketing, which provides development consulting, marketing and sales services to the residential real estate development community. She has held senior positions at The Marketing Directors, M.J. Raynes Incorporated and Citicorp Real Estate where she was a vice president and director of Residential Asset Management-North America and Marketing Consulting Group. She believes the industry will be challenged by the financial climate, a shortage of skilled labor needed to fuel growth and the ability to stay current, relevant and connected during the technology revolution.

Patricia Goldstein

Principal

Citadel Realty Group, LLC

In late 1999, Goldstein started Citadel Realty Group, an investment banking firm, with three partners. At Citadel, Goldstein provides real estate advisory services including raising capital for owners and developers. She expects Citadel also to be involved in complex equity/mezzanine raising as well as mergers, acquisitions and sales. Known for her ability to get deals done, Goldstein was previously division executive of Citicorp Global Real Estate with responsibility for investment decisions on new business opportunities as well as workouts and OREO portfolios. She also managed sales/leasebacks, emerging market financing transactions and real estate deals with large global customers. Previous to the merger with Solomon Smith Barney, she was responsible for all real estate securitization. Goldstein also served as executive vice president and COO at M.J. Raynes and was a senior vice president and treasurer for Olympia & York Companies (USA).

Dede Gotthelf

President

Catcove Corp.

Gotthelf is a rare breed -- a woman developer -- but feels that being a woman has not been an obstacle in a field dominated by men. After stints at Chase Manhattan, Julien J. Studley, Inc. and the Urban Development Corporation, Gotthelf named herself executive vice president of a one-woman business, The Catco Group, in 1985. Bringing together teams to bid on projects, her firm was a general partner on a residential site at Battery Park City. Recently, Catcove purchased and refurbished the rundown, 90-room Southampton Inn, transforming the property into a chic, year-round accommodation. She considers her greatest career achievement to be assembling 8 acres of land for a retail project in downtown Hampton Bays so that the hamlet could finally take its place among the charming and historic towns of the South Fork. She foresees preserving the environment, historic sites and low-rise densities in the face of continuing development to be the industry's biggest challenge.

Amie Gross, R.A.

President

Amie Gross Architects (AGA)

Gross considers having a business that has survived -- and thrived -- through 16 years of economic and real estate industry cycles to be her greatest achievement. AGA's work encompasses apartment buildings, landmark structures, institutional buildings, retail stores, showrooms, classrooms, social service facilities and office interiors. Among other notable projects, AGA designed Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and the national prototype for Circuit City electronics stores. As committed to using architecture to solve social problems as she is to creating harmonious working, living and shopping environments, Gross's firm has a national reputation for sensitive, innovative, research-driven work for special needs populations. AGA's breakthrough work for Hofstein House at Clinton Court in Hempstead, NY, a HUD development, received a 1998 Award of Merit from New York Construction News. AGA's East Fourth Street residential building for previously homeless families and the mentally ill was deemed the first of its kind in the city by The New York Times.

Veronica W. Hackett

Principal

The Clarett Group

Loving the multi-dimensional aspects of being a developer -- the equivalent of producing the play or leading the orchestra -- Hackett considers her greatest career achievement to be survival. The Clarett Group buys, develops and redevelops properties in urban areas. The firm recently announced a joint venture to build residential apartments with Post Properties of Atlanta, is constructing a 97-unit residential apartment building in the Murray Hill neighborhood and acting as development consultant to The New York Times. Hackett was president of the real estate development arm of Venator Group (formerly Woolworth Corporation), prior to which she managed all real estate aspects of a 1,000 store supermarket chain. For nine years, Hackett was an executive vice president of Park Tower Realty Corp. and a key player in the acquisition, planning, development, financing, leasing and management of projects exceeding 12 million square feet. She also spent nine years with Chemical Bank (now Chase) where she was one of it s first women senior vice presidents.

Sophia Haliotis

Group Vice President

EAB 

Starting her career as an accounting administrator at Green Point Savings Bank, this real estate banker now successfully managed EAB's commercial portfolio totaling approximately $300 million. She originates a wide spectrum of loan -- multifamily, retail, office, industrial, single-family, condominium and specialty use. Her financing scenarios include construction, permanent, bridge and syndications. Resultsoriented and an excellent negotiator, Haliotis is responsible for new business development, credit analysis, structuring and underwriting business loans in the range of $1 million to $50 million.

Abby C. Hamlin

President

Hamlin Ventures, LLC

Hamlin's goal in founding her company in 1997 was to develop a portfolio of unique real estate opportunities. So far, her ventures include a 100,000 square foot ice-based sports and entertainment center in New Rochelle, Reade Street Houses (the first new townhouses constructed in TriBeCa in 150 years) and, in the planning stages, a 200-key modem luxury boutique hotel. After an injury put an end to her first career as a dancer, Hamlin entered real estate. In 1983, she was hired by Swig Weiler & Arnow Mgt. Co., one of the country's wealthiest real estate families, which developed, owned and managed Class A office buildings (in New York alone exceeding 5.5 million square feet) as well as the Fairmont Hotels. She eventually rose to the position of president and capped her 14- year career there by spearheading the development proposal for Sites 7 and 8A on 42nd Street and with the sale of the Weiler Arnow families' interest to Trizec Hahn. She then left for a solo performance at Hamlin Ventures.

Caroline A. Harcourt

Partner, New York Office

Winthrop, Stimson,

Putnam & Roberts

Harcourt represents U.S. and non-U.S. and domestic institutions, investors and developers in connection with complex real estate matters. Her practice includes large-scale development projects; headquarters relocation projects; sales and purchases of office buildings, hotels and other commercial properties; construction and permanent financing; ground and office leases, and off-balance sheet leases; partnership and joint venture agreements; and design and construction-related agreements. Harcourt also represents financial institutions and corporations in structuring financial incentive and tax relief agreements with local municipalities.

Leslie Harwood

Managing Director

Newmark & Company Real Estate

During her illustrious 20-year career, Harwood has been one of the most recognized names in the real estate industry. Since joining Newmark & Company in 1993, Harwood has represented some of the most prominent companies in the U.S., including Compass Partners, Rosecliff, Inc., Kalvin-Miller International Inc., Gryphon Development, Inc. (a division of The Limited) and NCH Advisors. In 1996, she was the recipient of the Emma Lazarus Award for "Dynamic Women in Business" from the Associated Builders & Owners of Greater New York, and in 1993, the Young Men's/ Women's Real Estate Association honored her as the "Young Real Estate Person of the Year" for her integrity, knowledge and accomplishments in the field of real estate. An outspoken advocate on Israel's economic development, she was awarded The Max Feld Industry Achievement Award by Israel Bonds in 1995. A former Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Young Men's/ Women's Real Estate Association of New York and a member CREW (Commercial Real Estate Women, New York), Ms. Harwood loves the art of the deal. "I enjoy the negotiating process. People may start out screaming and seemingly unable to reach an agreement, but in the end they can see the benefit of the deal and everyone winds up shaking hands," she says. Harwood sees the biggest challenge for the industry is its ability to adapt to constant changes in a way that maximizes the value of the services provided by real estate professionals.

Nicola M. Heryet

Managing Director

Colliers ABR 

Heryet loves that every day and every deal is different. She also thrives on the continual learning and daily challenge of real estate. Active in commercial real estate since 1983, she joined Colliers ABR in 1996, having previously been a senior director at Joseph Hilton Associates, Inc. As one of Collier's top brokers, she was promoted to managing director earlier this year. Over her career, Heryet has negotiated leases aggregating over 3 million square feet of office space for clients such as The Limited, Rand McNally & Company, Alusuisse Lonza America, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., Cellular Communications, Fluor Corporation and the YWCA of the U.S.A., among others. Most recently, she represented the United Nations Office for Project Services in a relocation to the Chrysler Building and the U.S. Population Fund in a lease renewal. Heryet foresees staying ahead of the technology curve, both for individuals and real estate service providers, as a leading challenge facing the industry.

Susan Hewitt

Founder and President

The Cheshire Group, LLC

Hewitt has over 15 years experience as a developer, manager and investor in New York City's residential market. The Cheshire Group, which she founded in 1993, specializes in coop-related assets and has acquired over $38 million in underlying mortgages on ten coops totaling over 1,900 units. In most cases, Hewitt worked with coops that found themselves unable to service their mortgage debt. The Cheshire Group currently manages a $50M fund (in partnership with Sterling American Properties, II), targeting unsold shares in cooperative and condominium apartment complexes throughout the New York Metropolitan Area. To date, they have acquired over 750 units in 15 cooperatives from the original sponsors. Hewitt is forecasting an economic event which will bring down real estate prices within the next five years and expresses interest in how the CMBS market, with its inflexible structure and cumbersome decision-making, will react to the stress of falling values.

Leslie Wohlman Himmel

Partner and President

Himmel + Meringoff Properties

Himmel professes that her experience at Harvard Business School, where she graduated in 1978 with High Honors when only 12% of the students were women and she was one of the youngest, gave her the confidence to compete in the primarily male and tough business of real estate. She has not only competed, but spectacularly succeeded. Named as one of "New York's 100 Most Influential Women in Business" in 1999 by Crain's New York Business, Himmel, with her partner, presides over 3 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space in New York and California. As an owner/landlord, Himmel has been responsible for the acquisition and financing of over 40 transactions representing over $250 million of commercial office buildings in New York City. She considers retaining ownership of over one million square feet of office buildings through the tumultuous 1989-1994 economic times as her greatest accomplishment. Upcoming plans include doubling the company's New York City holdings within five years.

Ellen Israel

Senior Vice President

The Witkoff Group

Israel was only 22 years old when she burst upon the real estate scene with her first deal, the sale of Ford Motor Company's one million square foot headquarters for $40 million. Though many thought the transaction a fluke, Israel proved them wrong with follow-ups that included the sale of the White Plains Hotel, 1776 Broadway, the Christiania Building in Tarrytown, The Swiss Bank headquarters building to Merrill Lynch, 10 East 53rd Street and 63 Madison Avenue. She also sold 866 Third Avenue to her present employer, developer/owner Steven C. Witkoff. Presently, Israel is responsible for acquisitions, dispositions and leasing of Witkoff's portfolio. She was previously managing director of the Insignia/ESG Capital Advisor Group, a partner at Riverbank Realty and principal of her own investment firm. A supporter of women entering the real estate business, she foresees an upcoming challenge as keeping current with ever changing technology in a future of smart buildings, smart tenants and smart deals.

Victoria W. Kahn

Managing Director

Clarion Partners, LLC

Kahn finds that while the "bricks and mortar" are static, the real estate business itself is fluid, shaped both by external forces, such as population and job growth trends and cost of capital, and internal forces such as building design, location and pricing. Kahn excels at gauging that fluidity as managing director of Clarion Partners, an investment advisory firm that manages diversified portfolios of high quality properties throughout the United States and real estate securities valued in excess of $8 billion. Responsible for portfolio management activities, including asset management for Clarion's pension client portfolios, she has led projects as diverse as the redevelopment, releasing and sale of Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, the recent acquisition of 111 8th Avenue, one of NYC's telecom hubs, and the creation of several private office and retail REITs. Kahn foresees the industry facing the dual challenges of globalization and the Internet in a brave (if smaller) new world.

Marilyn Kane

Vice President

Butler Kane, Inc.

What Kane loves most of all about real estate is the sense of fulfillment she has with the successful completion of a deal. At Butler Kane, that fulfillment comes often. Servicing clients with a handholding approach in every aspect of the real estate transaction and throughout the duration of a lease, Butler Kane is, in essence, an out-source real estate department. Company clients include, among others, Vidal Sassoon, Botega Veneta, Georgette Klinger, Jill Stuart, Forms + Surfaces and Malaysian Airlines. Kane believes her tenacity in lease negotiations is a result of a six-year legal case that landed her exhusband in jail for failure to pay child support and her on the cover of People magazine. Named one of "New York's 100 Most Influential Women in Business" by Crain's New York Business, she anticipates that dealing with the "inevitable" correction after these spectacular boom times will be the industry's greatest challenge.

Joanne Kennedy

President

Coldwell Banker

Hunt Kennedy Downtown

Kennedy loves the epic drama of real estate and its dynamic interplay with the city at large. Raised in the South, she's been in residential sales in Manhattan since 1978. Leaving Stribling & Associates where she was a vice president in 1988, she and a partner founded Hunt Kennedy, Inc. to service residential brokerage needs on Manhattan's West Side. When Hunt Kennedy became Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, they went from one office and 25 agents to 5 offices and 125 agents in three years, increasing revenues by 50% each year. In addition to serving as president of the Downtown office (her third start-up), Kennedy is also senior vice president of RealShare International, the holding company for all of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy's offices and related entities. She believes the industry is being challenged by technology and the internet in terms of costs, adapting to new ways of delivering services and keeping up with demand for instant information.

Debra Kloper

VP/The MONY Group

Real Estate

Investment Management

The challenge of staying ahead of the curve in the commercial real estate business exhilarates Kloper who is responsible for MONY Life Insurance Company's real estate investments in the seven-state Northeast Region. She also manages MONY's national $1.3 billion debt portfolio. Having directed the redevelopment and repositioning of various assets acquired via foreclosure or investment, more recently, Kloper took on leading MONY's new securitizable loan program. She joined the company in 1985 as assistant controller and later served as controller for the company's REIT. She considers her greatest career achievement to be a series of major transactions with Dialogic Corp., starting with a lease of 85,000 square feet that grew to the entire building plus an annex, all valued at more than $35 million. Kloper believes the industry will be challenged by understanding the impact of external factors, such as globalization and the plentiful availability of debt capital, on property values.

Lee Kosmac

Senior VP/ Corporate Accounts

Grubb & Ellis Company

A director at Insignia/ESG, Inc. before joining Grubb & Ellis, Kosmac loves the opportunities for creative problem solving in the real estate business which was not Kosmac's first career. As a result of what she calls her "former lives" in systems software, publishing and consulting, she's developed skills in management, operations, teaching and marketing that she has integrated and uses in real estate to service customers and produce tangible results. Kosmac has developed successful ongoing business relationships and has been awarded assignments with major companies that include Hewitt Associates, MetLife, MerckMedco, Cable and Wireless, McGraw-Hill, Pyramid Technologies, Louis Dreyfus, Cablevision, New York Times and Chase Manhattan Bank. She believes, "without a doubt", that technology will be the driver of many changes in the way the business of real estate is conducted. The industry's ability to manage and embrace change will be the major challenge -- and opportunity.

Susan Kurland

Director of Retail Brokerage

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

Within her specialty, retail, Kurland feels she has the ability to transform the landscape. She is also, according to many, transforming her company's retail business. Grid magazine, for one, opined that Kurland is "forging a new retail identity for Cushman & Wakefield, once a laggard in (the) field." Kurland herself considers helping to boost awareness of the company's retail business, in just two years. as her greatest career achievement. Her experience includes working with owners of retail projects in directing their marketing and leasing efforts as well as representing national and international retail tenants and users seeking entry into major U.S. markets. She is particularly skilled at representing boutiques and larger retailers in their efforts to locate in the city's most competitive markets. Her clients include Sprint/PCS, Federal Express, Timberland, Camper, Reebok Sports Club, Hennes & Mauritz, IKEA and American Girl. She foresees the biggest challenge in the retail arena as matching retail playe rs with landlords in terms of affording spaces.

Patricia J. Lancaster

Vice President

Public/Private Development

LCOR Inc.

A broker and architect, Lancaster was the first woman to be appointed deputy commissioner of Design and Construction with the New York City Department of General Services. where she managed a staff of 600, had an annual construction budget of $500 million and reorganized the division. Recently, she rejoined LCOR, a national real estate development and management company, to take charge of the Northeast Region. Specializing in structuring and implementing public/private partnerships, Lancaster and LCOR provide financing, expertise, impetus and "a road map" on projects for public and not-for-profit owners who want to maximize their sometimes under-utilized assets. Lancaster thrives on the satisfaction that comes with enhancing the built environment and is proud of LCOR's successful management of complex projects others are not willing or able to complete. She foresees communication technology as the biggest challenge facing the industry, explaining that "the old axiom of location, location, location just doesn 't matter when you factor in the Internet."

R. Lynn Levine, P.E.

Founding Partner and President

Rand Engineering P.C.

Levine considers the founding of Rand Engineering in 1987 with two partners as her greatest career achievement, because of the firm's success and the male-dominated nature of the engineering profession. Levine holds a five-year Professional degree in Architectural Engineering and serves as president of Rand which provides integrated engineering and architectural services. The firm's multidisciplinary approach has been a key factor in driving its growth as a resource for residential, commercial and institutional capital improvements. Levine, a founding member of the National Society of Architectural Engineers, has most recently devoted her time to the repair of the Milstein Pavilion at the Columbia campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Restoring the beauty and extending the life of architecturally significant buildings is the part of real estate Levine loves best. It is the philosophy of "tear down, build new" that she believes presents the challenge of how we can sustain economic growth while maintaining our architectural heritage.

Pamela B. Liebman

Chief Executive Officer

The Corcoran Group

For more than 15 years, Liebman has been a top sales performer and driving force in establishing The Corcoran Group as a leading residential real estate firm serving the downtown market. She grew the division and directed operations downtown for over a decade before taking on the role of president of Corcoran Group Marketing citywide where she supervised sales efforts on a number of successful residential projects. Considered a rising star since early in her career, Liebman has reached a new pinnacle with her recent appointment as CEO of The Corcoran Group where she will oversee management and day-to-day operations of the firm which tallied over $2 billion in sales in 1999. Liebman foresees two big challenges facing the industry in the next five years. The first is the same as the last five years: the Internet revolution which is transforming real estate. The second big challenge? How to maintain prosperity so that the current boom can continue unabated.

Patricia Van B. Madsen

Partner, Real Estate Department

Whitman Breed

Abbott & Morgan LLP

It was what Scarlett learned from her father -- "Land, darlin', it's the only thing that lasts" -- in other words, the history, the permanence, the tangible nature of real estate that drew Madsen to dirt law. It is what this partner at Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan continues to love best. Madsen represents a wide range of developers, lenders, corporations, governmental agencies and institutions in real estate transactions all over the country, with an emphasis on the New York Metropolitan Area. She considers getting Colgate-Palmolive Company as a client (through AREW, of which she becomes president for the 2000-2001 season) and representing them in the sale of six of their Jersey City properties as her most challenging and high-profile career achievement. This Harvard College/Columbia School of Law graduate, who loves a challenge, foresees the following for the real estate industry: facing down the twin risks of e-commerce and telecommuting, both of which pose a threat to the historically high valuations we see now.

Joan Marlow

President

JDM Real Estate Company

Recognized as an expert in her field, Marlow has appraised or supervised the appraisal of thousands of cooperatives and condominiums as well as hundreds of residential and commercial townhouses and buildings. Licensed as a broker, she holds the SRA designation from the Appraisal Institute and is a New York State Certified General and Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser. Marlow was previously with Brown, Harris, Stevens, Inc. where she began as a staff appraiser, was promoted to chief appraiser and, ultimately, to vice president before leaving in 1992 to form JDM, the success of which she considers to be her biggest career achievement. Energized by the myriad factors that affect her work and the market, Marlow believes the biggest challenge facing the industry is continually changing technology and that those who best interpret and serve the insatiable demand for information will fare best.

Nancy J. Marshall

Director

Grand Central Development

Metropolitan Transportation Authority

That people have the opportunity to embrace, enjoy and/or critique the projects she has worked on gives Marshall a special appreciation for working in the real estate industry. She has been with the Grand Central Terminal (GCT) Revitalization Project since 1993. She joined the MTA's development team as director of retail leasing and management and was promoted to director of GCT development. Under her charge are all aspects of the $196 million revitalization, which has updated and restored Grand Central to its 1913 glory, and installation of an ambitious retail component of 180,000 square feet. She began her career in 1980 by closing 60 percent of lease transactions for the Fulton Market Building as a senior leasing representative for the Rouse Company's South Street Seaport development. She then worked for Olympia & York Companies as director of retail leasing for the World Financial Center where she was responsible for leasing and tenant management of 200,000 square feet of retail space.

Elizabeth L. Martin

President

E.L. Martin & Co., Inc.

Martin loves the thrill of putting the pieces of deals together and having the puzzle completed when a transaction closes. Her firm, established eight years ago, provides commercial leasing and sales brokerage, consulting and appraisal services. Her clients include corporations, government agencies, not-for-profit organizations and local development corporations, among them, The New School for Social Research, The New York State Urban Development Corporation, Bad Boy Entertainment, bizTravel.com, DME Interactive and Harlem Legal Services. This savvy young entrepreneur was profiled in the "40 Under 40" section of Crain's New York Business and also received a "40 Under 40" Achievement Award from Network Journal Publications. Upon graduating from Yale, she joined Prudential Investment Corporation, earned a Masters of Science in Real Estate Investments and Development at New York University, then worked for Julien J. Studley, Inc. before flying solo. She considers lack of space (especially at affordable rents) t o be the biggest challenge for commercial brokers.

Louise M. Matthews

Director, Real Estate Development Colgate-Palmolive Company

Matthews considers her biggest career achievement to be capitalizing on the current market to complete a decade's worth of deals in a three year time frame. Matthews is responsible for developing and implementing plans for purchase and lease of real estate assets. She also directs efforts to sell surplus properties no longer needed for business operations. Her accomplishments include selling thirteen sites at Colgate Center in Jersey City which will be developed into 7 million square feet of office, residential and retail buildings. As part of the Colgate Center project, she managed a multi-disciplinary team constructing infrastructure including a new waterfront walkway, roads and major utilities. Globally, her projects include disposition of a manufacturing site in Hamburg and a lease for the European headquarters in Paris. Matthews was formerly a principal in The Praedium Group. She was the 1997/1998 president of AREW and honored in 1998 by New York Women's Agenda with a "Woman of the Future" Galaxy Award.

Constance J. Milstein

Principal Partner

Milstein Properties/Milstein Ventures

This attorney and philanthropist is one of the real estate industry's leading ladies who considers breaking through the glass ceiling of a male dominated industry to be her greatest career achievement. Since 1984, Milstein has been a principal partner in both Milstein Properties, a property development company that builds both residential and commercial properties, and Milstein Ventures, her family's investment business. In 1992, she was appointed director of Emigrant Savings Bank (with assets of $6 billion). From 1992-99, she served as co-chairman of Douglas Elliman Inc., New York's largest residential real estate brokerage. Her love of the business is based on the interaction with people. She believes the biggest challenge facing the industry is how to best recognize and capitalize on opportunities created by globalization and effectively use and the internet and other technology. Appropriately, she is presently focused on taking Milstein's business global to expand into a worldwide ownership and managemen t company.

Maureen Munroe

Vice President

Citibank

Munroe provides appraisal and consulting services within Citigroup to all major real estate lending areas and specializes in community development and not - for - profit projects. As a board member of the AREW Charitable Fund for 10 years, Munroe has been a driving force in numerous initiatives including co-chairing a New Times Square Gala that raised $75,000 for the scholarship program, as well as spearheading fund raising activities for Women In Need and the AREW Community Development Grant Program. She believes the biggest challenge facing the industry is how to achieve a stable balance between supply and demand to make the next downturn as mild as possible.

Mary R. Musca

Executive Director

Riverside South Planning Corporation

Musca comes to work each day with an enthusiasm for new challenges that test her problem-solving skills and ingenuity -- all of which and more are needed as executive director of RSPC, a unique public-private partnership of civic organizations and developer Donald Trump, committed to creating a $3 billion real estate project on the largest undeveloped site in Manhattan. Since 1995, Musca has helped move the project from an incredible master plan to an impressive development -- almost 1,000 residential units in three buildings including 100 affordable housing units and 8 acres of public waterfront park have been constructed. Before joining RSPC, Musca held several management positions with the New York State Urban Development Corporation, was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley & Company, a congressional staff member and research fellow at The Brookings Institution. Musca believes the industry's greatest challenge is finding space to build residential and commercial space in collaboration -- as opposed to in contention -- with existing communities.

Cherrie Nanninga

Deputy Chief Financial Officer

Director of Real Estate

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

Nanninga oversees Port Authority's commercial real estate portfolio -- 12 million square feet of office space, 900,000 square feet of retail and special- purpose space, 500,000 square feet of industrial space and various parking facilities for total lease revenues of $400 million. She considers her greatest career achievement as having played a role in the renaissance of downtown and the turnaround of the World Trade Center. As a result of the 1993 terrorist bombing and cutbacks in the financial industry, the World Trade Center had a 2 percent vacancy rate, equivalent to 2.1 million square feet. Since 1997, Nanninga has raised the World Trade Center's office occupancy from 79% to 96%, achieved a successful repositioning of its retail mall (increasing sales from $100 million to $160 million) and won BOMA/NY's 2000 Building of the Year award. In Nanninga's view, the biggest challenge for the industry will be to command top talent and investment dollars in the face of highly competitive alternatives.

Kathleen M. Nelson

Managing Director

TIAA-CREF 

Nelson has spent her entire 31-year career at TIAA-CREF and is presently managing di0rector/group leader for administration for TIAA's $28 billion mortgage and real estate portfolio. Her responsibilities include administration of the portfolio, including problem loan activities, research and strategy and appraisal, engineering and environmental. In addition to the actual "bricks and mortar" of the real estate business, what she has enjoyed most is the people she has worked with on transactions, from a small local developer to the heads of the largest public real estate companies in the country, professionals from the legal and brokerage communities, title companies, tenants and other financial institutions, each having added a dimension to her knowledge and life. As we look forward to an increasingly computerized world. Nelson is concerned about losing the personal camaraderie which she values so highly.

Carol D. Nichols

Senior Managing Director

Insignia/ESG

Capital Advisors Group

Nichols professes that she doesn't work well with intangibles. She likes ideas to eventually become "concrete", deriving pleasure from working on a project that altered a city's skyline. At Insignia/ESG's Capital Advisors Group (CAG), Nichols manages contacts with all major institutional clients. The group assists national and international clients with acquisitions and dispositions, debt placement, securitization advice and restructuring, and provides expertise in sale/leasebacks for investment grade and sub-investment grade credits and financing for build-to-suits. Recent transactions include NationsBank Tower in Miami, 757 Third Avenue in New York and a 1.6 million square foot portfolio of office buildings in suburban Detroit. Nichols joined CAG in 1997 after her retirement from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America where she was managing director in the Mortgage and Real Estate Division. This top-performing professional considers the greatest achievement of her 30-year career has been to survive. She expresses concern regarding the potential of e-commerce to dramatically alter the commercial real estate industry.

Daun Paris

President

Eastern Consolidated Properties, Inc.

At Eastern Consolidated -- the largest single-office commercial sales brokerage in the U.S. with over $1 billion in annual transactions -- Paris considers her greatest career achievement to be creating a brokerage opportunity where there is a collective group of seasoned decision-makers, all capable of closing large deals. Paris entered real estate in 1978 in what she calls "an almost exclusively male-dominated club". She founded Eastern Consolidated with partner Peter Hauspurg in 1981 and took her place among the city's dealmakers with the acquisition of the Lowell Hotel and disposition of the Midtown Hospital site. In the early 1990's, she concentrated her efforts on expanding the firm's personnel and financial service capabilities. Paris believes the next five years are critical in determining the essence of the relationship between real estate and technology, including competition for hightech space. Another challenge? Increasing the ability to maximize space in a market of growing demand and unprecedente d finite availability.

Carol J. Patterson

Partner

Zetlin & De Chiara LLP

For Patterson, the excitement of real estate is the constant focus on transforming, reinvention and renewal of our surroundings. Both Patterson and her firm serve clients in the real estate and construction industries on a nationwide basis. Over the past 15 years, she has represented prominent firms in matters relating to design and construction of major office and residential buildings, performing arts centers, museums, hospitals, educational institutions, transportation facilities and other public buildings. She advises clients on matters including dispute resolution, contracts, risk management and professional licensing matters and has recently been involved in negotiations related to the renewal of one of the nation's premier theaters, expansion of a major art museum, an addition to a prominent educational institution and development of new corporate headquarters for an international insurer. Patterson believes the industry's biggest challenge is to pragmatically plan to minimize the shock waves and disl ocations of the next downturn while taking full advantage of the current prosperity.

Marlyn A. Pauley

Director of Strategic Agency Services

Cushman & Wakefield

Pauley is well positioned at Cushman & Wakefield to practice her business philosophy of creating "win-win" transactions for landlord and tenant. Her responsibility at the Strategic Agency Services group is that of a dedicated owner's representative on a portfolio of properties in Midtown and Downtown Manhattan, providing value-added service to agency leasing teams and oversight/coordination with management and ownership. Pauley's entry into New York real estate was a global experience. After six years in commercial real estate in Los Angeles, she purchased an around-the-world air ticket, headed west and eventually arrived in New York for a visit with her American Field Service "sister", Kyoko, in Scarsdale. Recognizing opportunity in the city's recovery of the early 90's, she joined Gordon Property. Group as an asset manager/agency representative, then Heitman Properties as a leasing manager before joining Cushman & Wakefield. Pauley believes the industry's biggest challenge is that the 20th Century world of real estate needs to rethink business in terms of the 2lstCentury.

Nancy Peck

President

Nancy Peck & Company, LLC

Peck is a highly accomplished redevelopment and interior construction professional whose project management firm helps midsize and smaller companies achieve success with office relocations and renovations. Her career began over 20 years ago in interior design and moved to envelop and command project construction. Peck has successfully coordinated and completed more than $500 million in redevelopment and renovation projects and directed the installation of more than 3,000 office tenants and retailers. This founding executive of S.L. Green Realty Properties Inc. and former president of S.L. Green Real Estate, S.L. Green Management Corp. and Emerald City Construction Corp., derives tremendous personal satisfaction in transforming a wonderful, old, underutilized building to its highest and best use. Among her notable recent accomplishments: the repositioning (in image and utility) of the Graybar and Bowery Savings Bank buildings, along with 17 Battery Place. Peck believes we will be challenged by our economy's s eachange to a technology-based environment.

Linda J. Peters

Project Manager

Brooklyn Court Project

U.S. General Services Administration

On a winter morning in Brooklyn, federal and local officials gathered to break ground for the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse project, a celebration for local groups involved in its planning and for Peters, who developed a unique working relationship with both the community and political leaders. Peters serves as project manager of the $500 million, 1.5 million square foot multi-phase project consisting of demolition of an existing federal office building, construction of a new courthouse and renovation of the adjacent historic General Post Office. Peters is a non-traditional success story. Having worked for GSA for 23 years, she has personally participated in GSA's movement from a government agency that considered itself a landlord to one that acts as a member of the community. She views the opportunity to complete the Brooklyn Court Project, which will serve as a vibrant focal point of activity and meet both community and client agency needs, to be her greatest career achievement.

Karen A. Phillips

President/Chief Executive Officer

Abyssinian Development Corporation

In 1980, Phillips arrived at the Harvard Graduate School of Design armed with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, five years urban planning and design experience and a desire to change the environment of the disadvantaged. Subsequently employed by the Port Authority and New York State Urban Development Corporation, Phillips became the first employee of Abyssinian Development Corporation in Harlem in 1989. She has since led the not-for-profit organization in creating over 600 rental housing units, 130 house for ownership, a 64,000 square foot shopping center, a Head Start center, a middle and high school in partnership with the NYC Board of Education) and development plans for two historic properties from the Harlem Renaissance. Named one of "New York's 100 Most Influential Women in Business" by Crain's New York Business in 1999, Phillips believes building economically and environmentally sustainable communities that accommodate a diversity of income levels and limit urban sprawl is the industry's greatest challenge.

Diane P. Phillpotts

President

Harlem Community Development Corporation (Harlem CDC)

As president of Harlem CDC, Phillpotts plays a central role in seeing that community plans are implemented after what she calls "a generation of inertia." Phillpotts works with owners of underutilized commercial properties to attract new business and create employment, and with developers to produce market-rate housing as a complement to the area's subsidized housing. She expects two such projects -- the Dwyer Warehouse redevelopment into 40 lofts and Mount Morris Park West, which will turn 9 brownstones into 36 condominiums -- to be under construction this year. Phillpotts also has project management responsibility for East River Plaza, a bigbox retail project on six acres in East Harlem, the Victoria Theater's redevelopment as the core of a major entertainment complex, Tony Mendez Apartments and Morningside Parc Condominiums. Phillpotts, who began her career in banking, worked for Long Beach Redevelopment Agency, The Port Authority and New York State Urban Development Corporation before joining Harlem CDC i n January 1998.

Rita Pierre

Partner

David Berdon & Co. LLP

This audit partner with David Berdon & Co. is particularly attuned to the demands and challenges facing the real estate industry, thriving on the industry's dynamic environment and interplay with the financial markets. In the accounting profession, where growing numbers of women are represented at the entry and middle management levels, Pierre is one of the select few who has been elevated to partner. As such, she is involved in all aspects of accounting and auditing and, after 16 years, has extensive expertise in servicing real estate, professional service and advertising clients. She works with developers, building owners and investors in the preparation, analysis and audit of special purpose financial statements relating to mortgage and other financing agreements, certiorari filings, rent escalation clauses, cash flow allocations and determination of net operating income. Pierre foresees the industry's greatest challenge as keeping pace with the rapid changes in technology.

Virginia Pittarelli

Senior Vice President/Director

Trammell Crow Company (TCC)

New York Urban and Specialty Retail Group

When the Trammell Crow Co. (TCC) decided to make the move to enter the New York City market, they tapped Pittarelli (then directing Jones Lang Wootton' s National Retail Services Group) to lead the way. Drawing upon 20 years of experience, Pittarelli runs TCC's New York Urban and Specialty Retail Group which offers ownership services and a full array of retail real estate services for companies looking to locate to, or expand their presence in, the New York Metropolitan Area. She is presently spear heading multi-market strategic planning for several high-profile national and international companies. Pittarelli has concluded well over 500 transactions in her career, having represented clients such as Club Monaco, The Body Shop, Borders Books, J. Press and Citibank. Prior to joining Jones Lang Wootton, she served as senior vice president and managing director of CB Commercial's Retail Services Group and spent several years at Koeppel, Toner, Riguardi.

Laura Pomerantz

Senior Managing Director

Newmark & Company Real Estate

Pomerantz made a fascinating career transition from the apparel industry to real estate, her talent and skill propelling her to the senior executive level of both. Pomerantz loves the excitement of creating value for clients on assignments that seem impossible or are incredibly complex. She brings her extensive executive-level experience, and breadth of knowledge in strategic and tactical planning and cost reduction analysis, to her major tenant representation assignments at Newmark. Pomerantz is presently working on transactions for more 1.4 million square feet and providing strategic real estate services for Bloomberg and White & Case. Prior to joining Newmark, Pomerantz was executive managing director of S.L. Green and, before that, executive vice president of The Leslie Fay Companies, Inc. (where she also served on the board). She believes the industry faces a number of challenges: lack of product, dealing with technological change and acknowledging and elevating the status of women.

Jennifer J. Raab

Chairman New York City

Landmarks Preservation Commission

Raab is credited with bringing a new attitude and understanding of the challenges of property ownership to the LPC. Believing that New York's character depends on the success of both the city's growth and protection of its past, as the LPC's chairman, she has worked to safeguard the city's historic buildings while establishing a fair and effective regulatory system to ensure that they can fill the needs of a 21st Century economy. Since Raab's appointment in fall 1994, the LPC has designated 116 individual landmarks (including, recently, CBS's "Blackrock" and the Ford Foundation building) and created nine historic districts. Overall, the LPC regulates changes to over 20,000 landmarked properties in New York City. Raab's background is in politics, and law. She was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, issues director for the 1989 Giuliani Mayoral Campaign and campaign director for the 1988 Rose State Senate Campaign.

Susan B. Rahm

Real Estate Partner Chair

International Practice Group

Kaye, Scholer Fierman, Hays & Handler, LLP

Rahm could easily say that 1999 was a very good year. She was named "Commercial Real Estate Woman of the Year" by CREW/NY (where she was a past president and director) and selected as "One of the Best Lawyers in New York" in a New York Magazine feature. Rahm joined Kaye, Scholer as a partner in 1982. Prior to becoming a lawyer, she worked for the D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency and the New York State Urban Development Corporation. During her years of legal practice, she has handled almost all aspects of real estate development, ownership and investment for both U.S. and foreign clients. Client needs have expanded her practice to include counsel on tax, labor and corporate matters with the assistance of others in her firm. Back in 1987, Rahm was the recipient of the "She Knows Where She's Going" Award from the Girls Club of America. Even then, they -- and she -- knew her capacity for outstanding achievement.

Diane M. Ramirez

President/Executive Director of Sales

The Halstead Property Company

Ramirez used to get enormous personal pleasure out of closing a deal. Now, having made the transition from broker to executive and manager, she derives her satisfaction from watching smart young brokers do the same. Ramirez has been a top-performing residential broker since helping Clark Halstead form his company in 1984 and a key player in Halstead's growth from two brokers in one office to 260 brokers at six branches. Working as a broker until 1987 when she assumed the management role of director of sales she was promoted to executive director of sales in 1993 and named president in 1999. Ramirez received REBNY's "Deal of the Year" award in 1988 and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of REBNY's Residential Division. She has carved some time out of her busy professional and personal life to become intimately involved with a cause particularly dear to her heart: the Irish-American Partnership.

Dale Anne Reiss

Global Industry Leader/Real Estate

E&Y Kenneth Leventhal

Real Estate Group

Having founded the Chicago office of Kenneth Leventhal & Company in 1985, Reiss was responsible for Midwest activities covering 13 states and grew the office to 200 people in five locations. In 1999, Reiss was tapped to head the New York Metro Real Estate practice and named global industry leader for her firm. Her goal is to expand New York revenues by at least 25% within 12 months through a strategy of hiring more of the best people and pursuing the most promising market segments including public/private initiatives REITs, hospitality, international investment and corporate services. Reiss provides services for both publicity traded and privately held client companies in all aspects of real estate development, investment and finance and is coordinating partner on several real estate investment trusts. She views the movement to a dot.com environment as both the industry's biggest challenge and a phenomena that will be fascinating to participate in and watch.

Ronnette Riley, FAIA 

Ronnette Riley Architect

Principal

What this award-winning architect loves most about real estate is imagining the possibilities of space and experiencing the realization that, when a project is over, her decisions create value either economically or by enhancing the environment. Riley opened her namesake firm in 1987 after eight years in the office of John Burgee Architects with Philip Johnson. As project architect (from first sketch to final punchlist) on the Lipstick building at 855 Third Avenue, she gained the expertise and confidence to open her own firm and develop it into a thriving practice. Her public sector projects include three police precinct renovations and ADA surveys of seven historic courthouses. Riley also has a strong retail specialty design office with clients such as Coca-Cola Fifth Avenue, Restoration Hardware, New Balance, The Emerald Planet and Yves Saint Laurent. She believes the industry's biggest challenge is repositioning buildings to accommodate new media companies, with an emphasis on integrating technology.

Rebecca Robertson

Vice President/Real Estate and Special Projects

Shubert Organization, Inc.

Robertson operates in a unique real estate niche: competing for space on Broadway (some of the most expensive real estate in the world) in order to build theaters and, thus, sustain one of the city's major attractions. Robertson is in charge of the Shubert Organization's real estate portfolio of 20 theater buildings, 2 million square feet of air rights and two new theaters in development. Between 1990 and 1997, she was president of the 42nd Street Development Project, Inc. Under her leadership, leases were negotiated for construction and restoration of 6 million square feet of theater, entertainment venues, tourist attractions and extravagant signage that have transformed 42nd Street into a leading entertainment destination which she considers to be her greatest career achievement. Robertson was the 1996 recipient of the George S. Lewis Award from the American Institute of Architects. Before moving to New York, she worked in planning and development in Caracas, Mexico City and Toronto.

Amy Rose 

Executive Vice President

Rose Associates, Inc.

Rose, who has been employed with her family's real estate company, Rose Associates, for the past eleven years, is a member of the firm's New York City residential leasing, management and development operation. She also supervises all aspects of the company's corporate marketing program and human resources. With a strong background in construction, Rose is involved in many of the firm's construction projects, most recently, The Madison Belvedere, a 50-story, 400 residential unit building at 10 East 29th Street. For the past four years, Rose has been a key member of the firm's consulting group which provides real estate advisory and asset management services to financial institutions and professional investors. Her responsibilities include market studies, business plans, project administration and implementing sales and marketing programs.

Wendy Rowden

Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

Rockefeller Group International, Inc.

Rowden is responsible for the operations of Rockefeller Group International's legal department and heads the organization's strategic initiatives with respect to e-commerce opportunities. Among other career achievements, Rowden played a significant role in putting together the deal for 745 Seventh Avenue, a new, one million square foot office building being co-developed by Rockefeller Group Development Corporation and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. This complex transaction took less than 90 days, from start to finish, to structure and close. Prior to joining RGI in 1987, Rowden practiced law with the New York City law firm of Gelberg & Abrams. This immediate past president of CREW, serves on the board of directors of Cushman and Wakefield, CREW, The Emelin Theatre and Epode, Inc., a not-profit dance company. In 1999, Rowden was inducted into the YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers. She believes that adapting to an increasingly digital economy is one of the biggest challenges (and opportunities) for the real estate industry.

Nancy Ruddy

President and Founding Principal

Cetra/Ruddy Inc.

Believing that success stems from having a passion for what one does -- and doing it well -- Ruddy puts her passion for designing innovative, high quality buildings and spaces to work as president and a founding member of Cetra/Ruddy Inc. Since its inception in 1987, this award-winning boutique company has made impressive strides. Its projects include a 962-unit waterfront residential community in Long Island City, investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & 'Woods' new national headquarters at Two World Trade Center and redesign of the information technology office of VitaminShoppe.com, among others. Cetra-Ruddy also served as design architect for the conversion of 45 Wall Street and 200 Water Street and was responsible for the transformation of one of the city's largest S.R.O. buildings -- Euclid Hall -- into permanent housing for the homeless. Ruddy foresees creating middle income housing for families that support "the economic engine of this city and are currently unserved by new housing development" as a challenge for the short-term future.

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Anita Sapirman, RAM, NYARM 

Founder and President

Saparn Realty, Inc.

Sapirman thrives on the adrenaline generated by the fast-paced environment of the industry as well as the opportunity to contribute to the quality of life of the residents whose homes she manages. Saparn Realty specializes in property management, brokerage, financing and development counseling services and currently manages 41 residential properties with 3,400 units in the Metro New York area. Prior to founding Saparn, for 15 years, Sapirman was executive vice president of The Association for Middle Income Housing where she developed and managed housing projects and effected the conversion of more than 6,000 units to cooperative housing. Sapirman and Saparn Realty have received numerous industry awards, among them, REBNY's Residential Management Executive of the Year; Management Company of the Year from NYARM; and Excellence in Management awards from ABO and Habitat magazine. She foresees establishing and monitoring uniform, industry-wide standards in residential management to be a significant challenge facing the industry.

Lisa Sarajian

Managing Director

Standard & Poor's

Real Estate Finance Group

Sarajian loves the colorful personalities involved in real estate and, from an analytical perspective, the dynamic and critical link between real estate and the economy. Sarajian is responsible for overseeing a team of seven analysts who assess the credit quality of over 100 domestic operating real estate companies -- developers, homebuilders, private trusts and real estate investment trusts with roughly $65 billion in rated securities outstanding. Sarajian's team also provides analytical support to Standard & Poor's foreign analysts on non-U.S. real estate-related credit evaluations. Previous to joining Standard & Poor's in 1987, she was with Financial Service Corp. and Citizens & Southern National Bank (now NationsBank). She also spent four years as a Peace Corps water resources program director in Mali and is fluent in Bambara, the native language. Sarajian foresees three challenges ahead: proving to the investment and lending community that the industry has learned from its mistakes; building to contrib ute to community betterment; and becoming more judicious users of capital.

Mary Frances Shaughuessy

Founding Partner and Principal

Tudor Realty Services Corp. (TRS)

A decade ago, when other management firms were closing up shop, Shaughnessy formed Tudor Realty Services Corp. with two partners. Her ability to spot an opportunity in a soft market has more than paid off. Today, Tudor is among the top 20 largest coop and condominium management firms in New York and has expanded to include a brokerage division. Shaughnessy is a broadly experienced asset manager with expertise covering all aspects of property management and conversion. Her acumen in financial and budget planning has enabled TRS to lead client buildings through difficult transitions to better economic health. Shaughnessy is a two-time recipient of Habitat magazine's Management Achievement Award, a founding director of the Riverside Park Fund and, for six years, Parks and Landmarks co-chairman of Manhattan Community Board #7. From the management viewpoint, she believes finding competent vendors at a fair price who complete jobs in a reasonable amount of time is the industry's biggest challenge.

Heather Shively

Co-Founder and CEO

Capital Thinking, Inc.

Before founding Capital Thinking, an online commercial mortgage marketplace providing e-finance solutions, Shively was a director of Bank of Montreal's Real Estate Capital Markets Group. There she originated, structured, syndicated and closed over a billion dollars in innovative real estate financings across all major asset classes. Earlier, Shively helped establish the U.S. Debt Capital Markets Group at Nesbitt Burns Securities, Bank of Montreal's wholly owned investment banking subsidiary. She started her career at Kemper Securities and Geneva Capital Markets, Inc. but is proudest of her years of service as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa. Shively believes breaking the boom-and bust-cycle will be the industry's biggest challenge and that efficient, liquid commercial real estate finance markets will be a big part of the solution. In her view, technology-driven standardization of data, instruments, credit evaluation and pricing will make the risk-reward tradeoff more transparent, pull in mo re capital, deepen markets and reduce spreads.

C. Jane Smith, AIA 

Principal

Harris Smith Design

Smith serves as managing principal of Harris Smith Design, Inc., which she co-founded in 1999 to provide architectural, interior design, consulting and project management services. She considers her profession's greatest challenge to be building space that impresses the right image within the parameters of budget, schedule and function. With 25 years of experience, she has completed an impressive range of corporate, commercial and civic building projects. Smith and her firm were recently featured in Crain's New York Business and on the CNN Program "Business Unusual" for their creative and successful approach to strategic planning and design for dot-com companies. Prior to forming Harris Smith Design, she was founding partner and served as principal at Smith Ottaiano Architects and managed global headquarters projects for Mobil Corporation. Smith considers translating ideas to bricks and mortar within a fast paced environment of change -- without diminishing quality of product or life -- to be the industry's biggest challenge.

Sylvia Smith, AIA

Principal

Fox & Fowle Architects, P.C.

Smith loves engaging the challenge of defining and meeting a client's functional program and aesthetic vision within urban space constraints. She views each of her projects as a contribution to the city's fabric, and many have redefined recognizable places: the Times Square Subway Entrance, the American Bible Society at Broadway and 65th Street, the Spence School and the American Craft Museum. Smith directs Fox & Fowle Architects' award-winning Educational and Cultural Studio where current projects include, among others, a new adult educational center for the 92nd Street Y, an addition to the Calhoun School, the new Washington Montessori School in Connecticut and the renovation of and addition to the Beginning with Children School in Brooklyn. During the summer, Smith teaches design and building skills at the Yestermorrow School in Warren, Vermont where she also serves on the Board. She foresees great opportunities to "recycle" existing buildings to meet future needs, preserving neighborhood texture, scale and historic continuity through creative and sensitive adaptive reuse.

Darcy A. Stacom

Executive Director

New York Capital Markets Team

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

Stacom joined Cushman & Wakefield in 1980 as a capital markets intermediary and specializes in advisory work and the sale and acquisition of commercial office buildings, residential apartment houses, development projects and retail centers. She is responsible for the sale and advisory of over $3 billion of commercial real estate in New York and the restructuring of over $1 billion of mortgage and ownership positions. She loves the interdependent elements of selling real estate -- the tenants, physical building, expense structure, capital markets, investors -- that keeps her on the edge of her seat. The seat she occupies is that of "Queen of the Skyscrapers" according to The Wall Street Journal . Born into the real estate business, she was appointed executive director in 1996, the first woman to do so in Cushman & Wakefield's then 79-year history. She foresees re-attracting long-term investment capital to real estate (that has been drawn away by the technology and venture capital sector) as the key to continu ed growth and appreciation.

Tara I. Stacom

Executive Director

Brokerage Services Group

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

Stacom loves being what she calls "the architect of transactions". As such, she has represented more than 8 million square feet of complex leasing transactions in her career. At Cushman & Wakefield, she specializes in tenant and landlord representation leasing and investment sales. Named to the firm's list of Top 100 Brokers for the past 10 consecutive years, for several years, she has also been nationally ranked among the firm's top producers. So far in 2000, she has concluded a 100,000 square foot consolidation transaction with Swiss Re America Holding Corp. at 230 Park Avenue. In 1999, among other deals, she successfully negotiated over 220,000 square feet on behalf of Warner Music Group. In the same year (1998) that Crain's New York Business named her one of New York's "40 Under 40" leading executives, Stacom received Cushman & Wakefield's "Quality Award for Client Service". She forecasts learning how to develop and harness the new capabilities of the internet and related technology to provide clients wi th more precise services as the industry's biggest challenge.

Janice Stanton

Managing Director

Investment Research

Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

Stanton believes that real estate is an inefficient market and enjoys the challenges and rewards of discovering opportunities to add value and make money through superior market knowledge. It's an apropos philosophy based on her responsibilities at Cushman & Wakefield: analyzing investment markets and trends across markets. Stanton joined Cushman & Wakefield from Equinox Investments, a boutique investment management firm where she was a founding partner and head of research. Prior to forming Equinox, she served as a portfolio manager for pension fund investments in the real estate divisions of MetLife and SSR Realty. Stanton has managed more than $13 billion over the last 13 years. Her work has encompassed the capital markets (REITs and CMBSs) as well as the private real estate markets. She believes the three biggest challenges to the industry are high-tech advances, securitization and globalization, the latter "requiring real estate professionals to be equally savvy about New York as New Delhi".

Seena Stein

President

Newmark Partners, Inc.

For the past 19 years, Stein has been a leading force in commercial real estate, having represented Equitable Life Assurance, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chemical Bank, St. Paul Insurance, USA Network and Goldman Sachs, among others. As one of the founding members of Newmark Partners, she serves as president of the firm's New Jersey regional office. When she first came to New Jersey, a market dominated by industrial buildings, many insiders said it wasn't possible for a woman to be successful.

She has enjoyed proving the naysayers wrong, succeeding where others have failed. Prior to joining Newmark in 1994, Stein was senior vice president and director of sales and leasing for Jacobson, Goldfarb & Tanzman Associates and vice president and director of sales and leasing for Helmsley Spear. (She also had a position in risk arbitrage on Wall Street.) Stein believes that commercial real estate professionals will be challenged by the need to master a multitude of disciplines to be successful.

Mindy H. Stern

Partner

Schoeman, Updike & Kaufman, LLP

Stern loves that real estate, influenced by the economy, cultural trends, political leaders and a host of other factors, is never static. She considers practicing law in the real estate field to be most rewarding because when deals are consummated, it's a win-win for everyone involved. She also believes that dirt lawyers make a real difference by bringing a unique and valuable perspective to the table. Stern considers her greatest career achievements as being selected to clerk for a federal district court judge; becoming a partner in a very special private law firm in New York City; and being appointed as chair of the Committee on Real Property Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. According to Stern, the biggest challenge facing the real estate industry is full integration of technology advances into all segments of the industry. She believes the smartest and most creative members of the real estate community will enormously benefit from the technology revolution.

Elizabeth F. Stribling

President

Stribling & Associates Ltd.

After 13 years as a salesperson and broker with Whitbread-Nolan, Inc., Stribling founded her firm in 1980. Thirty years into her career, she still finds herself constantly challenged and surprised by Manhattan's residential real estate world. Stribling feels that, especially for a woman, real estate offers the occasion to exercise business acumen blended with personal sensibility in a highly demanding service industry. She knows of which she speaks. In the past two decades, the unequivocally elegant Stribling has grown her business to 135 brokers, acquired the oldest residential real estate firm in continuous business (Wells & Gay, originally founded in 1817 as James N. Wells & Sons) and founded Stribling Marketing Associates to further her firm's marketing and development work for residential conversions. This winner of the Henry Forster Memorial Award foresees a challenge in the ability to offer global instant information for the new e-commerce customer while successfully maintaining the hands-on service o f the traditional real estate broker.

Louise M. Sunshine

President and Chief Executive Officer

The Sunshine Group, Ltd.

After ten years with The Trump Organization where, among other responsibilities as executive vice president, she was instrumental in developing The Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower, Sunshine founded The Sunshine Group in 1986. The firm, which has completed over $5 billion in residential sales in the last decade, specializes in residential development and hotel condominium conversions, sales and marketing and also serves as consultant and advisor to developers, corporations and investors on acquisitions, development, financing, leasing and brokerage. Sunshine loves "the constant challenge of creating value." Her firm coined the phrase, "All square feet are not created equal," based on its ability to achieve record prices -- first $500, then $750, $1,000, $1,500 and, now, prices over $2,000 per square foot in the best buildings. She considers the lack of land available for new construction as the industry's biggest challenge, one which her firm has met by developing skills in conversion of commercial properti es to condominiums and repositioning residential projects in fluctuating markets.

Emily Tannen

Vice President

Director of Sales and Marketing

A.J. Clarke Real Estate Corp.

Founded in 1943 for the purpose of managing residential real estate, Tannen has been a broker with A.J. Clarke's Residential Sales Division since 1984. A consistent top-producer, Tannen moved into management 3-1/2 years ago as director of sales and marketing and A.J. Clarke's first (and only) woman vice president. She has since doubled her division's volume and propelled A.J. Clarke to a position, for two years running, as one of "New York City's Largest Residential Real Estate Brokerages" according to Crain's New York's Business

Tannen is currently working on maximizing awareness of A.J. Clarke's website (which she spearheaded) via new initiatives in traditional marketing strategies and information technology-based solutions. She believes the residential real estate industry will be challenged by its ability to meet the insatiable demand for information via technology, while maintaining perspective on the internet's role as an enhancement of, not a substitute for, personal service and other old-fashioned values that build brokerages.

Paula Wexler Tarlow

Co-Founder and President Habitations Ltd.

Tarlow's firm provides real estate consulting services to the private, non profit, public and institutional sectors. Founded in 1986, Habitations initially brought together real estate marketing, development and financial expertise on multi-family development and cooperative and condominium conversions. Finding the constant flux of the industry to be both fascinating and frustrating, she has adeptly shaped her company to market changes. After the late 1980's downturn, Habitations provided critical marketing and management services to financial institutions on distressed properties. Then a dual strategy of a brokerage division and offering consulting services to non profits on real estate related issues evolved. Today Tarlow's efforts are primarily devoted to meeting the changing development and asset management requirements of non profit organizations. Agreeing with an article by Jane Jacobs in The New York Times Magazine, she believes we need to rethink urban and suburban environments and how they function, foreseeing the industry's role as visionary and "master builder" for this new challenge.

Robin L. Taubin

Vice President

Senior Counsel/Real Estate Viacom International Inc.

Taubin's career and accomplishments are integrally tied to the history of the company she joined in 1981 -- Gulf & Western Industries. By 1984, Taubin was head real estate counsel for the conglomerate's three separate real estate divisions -- residential development, asset management and the balance of operations that went from A-Z, automotive parts to zinc mines. When the company became Paramount Communications in 1989, Taubin's practice became more corporate focused, handling divestitures and acquisitions worldwide. From 1983-93, her department handled millions of square feet of space on a yearly basis, including the sale of the former Madison Square Garden site which became Worldwide Plaza. Today, with Paramount acquired by Viacom International Inc., Taubin is responsible for all legal real estate related matters for Viacom and its divisions and subsidiaries such as MTV, VH-1, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Parks, Showtime, Blockbuster and Simon & Schuster. She foresees trying to keep pace wit h technology as the biggest challenge facing the industry.

Marilyn Jordan Taylor, FAIA

Partner

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Taylor, an architect and urban designer, joined SOM in 1971 and was elected partner in 1987. She spent her first several years in Washington, D.C. where she participated in design and planning for Hilton Head Island and the Great Mall of Washington, among other projects. From 1978 to 1985, she served as SOM's director of design for the $25 million Stations Program of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project. Moving to New York in 1985, she led SOM's expanded Urban Design and Planning practice where she has been involved in the preparation of plan for Columbus Center, Riverside South, East River Landing, Worldwide Plaza, the Tribeca Bridge, Route 9A, Pratt Institute and Chase Metrotech, among others. Her airport and transportation projects (including the International Arrivals Building at JFK) culminated in establishing SOM's Airports Group where current projects have a combined investment of over $1.5 billion. Taylor believes the challenge for designers will include defining the value of design and using i t to improve our sense of community.

Anne Teshima

Executive Managing Director

Haves, Pine & Seligman

Teshima loves meeting and working with people from all walks of life, from the Upper East Side socialite who needs an appraisal for her multi-million dollar co-op, to the recently arrived immigrant who is buying an apartment building and needs a mortgage. Teshima has worked as an appraiser and broker in New York since 1983. She began her career with the DiLorenzo family, private investors with a 150-property portfolio, moved to Brown, Harris, Stevens, and was a founder of Eugene A. Hegy & Associates in 1990. In addition to arranging mortgages, performing appraisals, serving as an expert witness and her commercial sales and leasing activities, Teshima has been active in the conversion of residential rental properties to cooperative and condominium apartments. (She was sales director for the conversion of the Ansonia during one of New York's toughest residential markets.) Teshima believes that, in New York, the industry will be faced with the challenge of attracting young people when the entry barriers are so high and, on a macro level, by its ability to build affordable housing.

Mary Ann Tighe

Vice Chairman

Insignia/ESG

One of the highest ranking women in commercial real estate, Tighe gets deep satisfaction from helping to shape the skyline of the "greatest city in the world". She experiences that satisfaction often, having been responsible for leasing/equity transactions in excess of 33 million square feet. Of late, her most high profile deal is the Conde Nast Publications' 720,000 square foot lease at 4 Times Square (for which she received the Henry Hart Rice Achievement Award). She has also restructured Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield's 2 million square foot real estate portfolio, was instrumental in SONY's 770,000 square foot headquarters lease at 550 Madison Avenue, and led the team that solved Christie's long-standing North American headquarters requirements by combining two buildings and a garage to form 20 Rockefeller Plaza. This consummate deal maker (whom The New York Times called "Xena the Warrior Princess" of mostly male commercial real estate), believes we need to find meaningful ways to integrate technological i nnovations into our business model.

Deborah van der Heyden

Managing Director

Newmark & Co. Real Estate, Inc.

Beginning her real estate career in 1989, van der Heyden joined Newmark in 1993 and has since negotiated transactions for office space, industrial land and special-use real estate such as data centers and research and development facilities. Currently, she is helping to build a new division, Newmark Retail Advisors. Her experience includes assisting E.I. Dupont in subleasing New York City office space; representing NBC and SONY Corporation in a data center building sale; representing Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York (HIP) in acquiring administrative offices and a data center; negotiating a sublease for Maritz Communications. Prior to entering commercial real estate (where she loves the way business is conducted and the need to react to rapidly changing market conditions), van der Heyden was an advertising account executive. Professing that the industry is slow to respond to paradigms, van der Heyden anticipates embracing technology and creativity as an industry challenge.

Dorothy Vermeer

Vice President and Secretary

H.J. Kalikow & Co. LLC

Vermeer is responsible for management and leasing of residential properties owned by H.J. Kalikow, a major real estate development company that constructs residential properties, office buildings and hotels. She also directs Kenilworth Management Corporation which serves as managing agent for cooperatives and condominiums. Prior to joining Kalikow, Vermeer was vice president of marketing and sales at Carol Management Corporation where she coordinated development and sale of new construction condominiums and conversion of more than 1,600 rental units to cooperative ownership. She was also vice president at Douglas Elliman for 15 years where she managed 17 cooperative and rental apartment buildings including budgets, insurance, maintenance, tenant relations and corporate matters. Vermeer feels involvement in real estate provides exceptional opportunities to master multiple disciplines, from finance to development, marketing to sales, to excel in a challenging industry.

Margo Grant Walsh

Vice Chairman/Managing Principal Gensler

Called "the world's most gracious dynamo" by Interior Design magazine, this member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame loves "the sheer energy, talent and momentum that go into every deal." Beginning her career with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco, Walsh left to join Gensler, then a small firm, to work on its first big commission: the interior of the Philip Johnson-designed Pennzoil Place in Houston.

Thriving on Gensler's entrepreneurial spirit, Walsh started up the New York office by herself in 1979, then repeated her success by opening the London office in 1988. (Both are the largest and consistently best revenue producers for Gensler.) Her New York clients include Davis, Polk & Wardwell, Cravath Swaine & Moore, Skadden Arps, Goldman Sachs, CSFB, Morgan Stanley and Ernest & Young. Walsh considers today's market to be the most dynamic she's experienced and believes that a sudden downturn (she's been through five in her 40-year career) could potentially create chaos for many tenants and professionals.

Meggan W. Walsh

Managing Director

HypoVereinsbank

Walsh was originally hired by Bayerische Vereinsbank in 1995 (pre-merger with Hypo) as the real estate credit officer, was promoted to manager of real estate lending U.S., and is presently managing director real estate lending, one of three team managers responsible for all management aspects in ongoing underwriting of new business of the bank's $6.5 billion U.S. real estate portfolio. Walsh has over 16 years of real estate and banking experience. She worked in appraisal and valuation for both Chase Manhattan Bank and Bank of America, then for French and German banks where she gained an international perspective on capital issues and risk. Walsh's favorite attribute of the real estate lending business is that it requires a multi-disciplined approach to be successful for the long haul. In Walsh's view, the biggest challenge facing the industry will be to exercise discipline and limit lending to insure that the supply of capital matches true demand, so that market supply and yields are in balance.

Ellen Weinstein

Principal

The Rain Wine R.E. Group, Ltd.

Weinstein founded her company in 1997 with Khristopher Reina to provide due diligence services to lenders, investors and other real estate related entities. The firm has since underwritten approximately $3 billion of commercial mortgages for various conduits, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac originators, and other lending facilities. Some noteworthy clients include CS First Boston, Lehman Brothers, Finova Capital, Deutsche Bank, HypoVereinsbank, and Arbor National Commercial Mortgage, Weinstein has worked on as an equity fund. What most interests Weinstein about real estate is that professionals require knowledge of many disciplines -- legal, financial, mechanical, environmental and economic issues, among them -- to conclude the value of an asset as an investment. She anticipates a two-dimensional challenge for the industry: the need for commercial developers and owners to keep abreast of change from an industrial to a technological nation and apply changes in domestic real estate to international economies.

Lois Weiss

Contributing Editor

Real Estate Weekly, Et Al

Many journalists cover real estate but Weiss stands alone as the voice of the industry. Through her news stories in Real Estate Weekly and popular, often irreverent (but always informative) "Between The Bricks" gossip column, Weiss scrutinizes every aspect of the industry. She also contributes to New York Living, New York Habitat, The Mann Report and Grid, writes an online column for Cityfeet.com and plans to launch BetweenThe Bricks.com as a fast track real estate news information site. True to form, Weiss is prolific and outspoken in predicting industry challenges: having enough high paying jobs to keep all the $2,000 apartments filled; creating enough housing so those with $500 or $800 to spend can get a legal, clean place to live; getting rid of rent regulation; streamlining housing administration; adding a penalty law for tenants that harass building owners; forcing co-op/condo owners to take on the administrative burden; licensing building managers; creating equitable property tax burdens and a fair gr ievance system; increasing incentives to build in outer boroughs and Harlem.

Arlene Wysong

Senior Managing Director

Newmark & Company Real Estate

Wysong, senior managing director for commercial leasing in the midtown headquarters of Newmark, has completed lease transactions valued at more than $500 million. Her expertise in the not - for - profit, publishing, service and high-tech industries has resulted in executing numerous deals for, among others, the Fresh Air Fund, Lincoln Center, the City of New York, National Urban League, United Negro College Fund, Bill Communications, NASW, CPT Corp. and Steego Corp. Formerly director of the Commercial Leasing Division at Sylvan Lawrence, Wysong also served the not-for-profit sector, working with North Shore Hospital, Greenwich House, The New School, New York University and Baruch College, before launching her successful real estate career. An immediate past president of CREW, Wysong opines that though things have definitely improved, the number of women in senior positions in real estate is still very low. She believes using new technology to enhance the delivery of services -- "being service providers rathe r than space finders" -- is the industry's biggest challenge.

Acknowledgments

The Association of Real Estate Women would like to thank Judith Alberty, president and founder of The Alberty Group, for the hard work and dedication that made this special issue possible, from helping to formulate criteria to collecting and editing nominations, and finally assembling the bios of those selected. AREW would also like to thank Eric R. Gerard, former editor of Real Estate Weekly and now a senior account executive at Great Ink Communications, Ltd., for always keeping his promises and seeing this project through to fruition.

Lastly, AREW would like to thank Chris Hagedorn, publisher of Real Estate Weekly, for providing this opportunity to highlight the many achievements of women in real estate.