Tighe taps into the art and soul of the business: Mary Ann Tighe, Chief Executive Officer, CB Richard Ellis Tri-State Region.

Mary Ann Tighe's resume may read like a compendium of dream deals, any one of which is sizeable enough to alone define the career of an average broker, but until she decided to get into real estate back in the mid 80s at the age of 36, she didn't even know exactly what a commercial leasing broker was.

A vice president at television giant ABC before her career switch, it wasn't as if she lacked the corporate pedigree, skill sets, and leadership ability to find quick success in the real estate industry and tap into the tantalizingly lucrative spoils that come with being an upper echelon dealmaker.

Despite her impressive credentials however and her innate ability for vaulting big challenges, Tighe remembers her transition into real estate as one that was far from easy.

Unlike the television industry, whose culture supported an open exchange of ideas and information, real estate brokering, according to Tighe, at the time of her entry, was a far more secretive and territorial affair.

She remembers that in her early days of working with established brokers, when she responded openly to a fellow broker's questions about a deal or property she was involved in, often she was met with incredulity and apprehension from her superiors and colleagues.

At that time, she explained, information, whether pertaining to an upcoming vacancy or a potential tenant, was considered proprietary and a distinct advantage to the party that possessed it. So why share it with the competition, or even fellow brokers from the same firm?

As Tighe is quick to exposit, sharing such knowledge internally in this manner is a practice that is at the foundation of today's top real estate services firms and one of the key things that has enabled the industry to execute transactions for its customers at an ever-increasing level of sophistication.

"Before going into real estate I was used to working as a team," Tighe said. "Going into real estate brokerage I was reprimanded for trying to do that, I was told to withhold information. Well meaning people told me riot to share. That was the model, but it was about change."

Brokers are no longer lone operators working in a business where the natural temptation is to horde and shelter information. Instead, if things are functioning the way they should, the brokers work now in teams, sharing information openly amongst one another and tapping the knowledge of an array of in-house experts versed in specific disciplines ranging from finance to architecture.

Tighe was at the forefront of the sweeping changes that helped usher in this more advanced operational model.

After first working for the Edward S. Gordon Company, Tighe joined on with Insignia/ESG, where she eventually rose to the position of vice chairman, and began leading a series of open forums in which she discussed market trends and potential avenues of business with the firm's brokers.

It was these kinds of sessions, one part informational, one part brainstorming, that helped promote the essential unity and amazing wealth of information that has made CBRE--which named Tighe the CEO of its New York Tri-State Region offices in 2002--one of the top real estate services firms in the world.

Another skill that Tighe possessed that was fast becoming integral to success upon her entry into the industry was writing and public speaking ability.

"I was a New York State oratorical champion in high school," Tighe said. "So public speaking was always something that I was very good at.

"Being able to write very well was something that I picked up during my time in government. When I started in real estate, these skills were just becoming essential as it was right at the beginning of the request for proposal age. My ability in these areas really helped me a lot."

Neither the more collegial atmosphere that Tighe helped to foster nor her natural presentation skills assured that her entry into the business went completely smoothly. Her first 18 months were so tough, she said she even asked her boss at the time, Ed Gordon, half jokingly, if there were any educational books on how to best succeed as a broker.

"I was always a great student and felt that if there was a book explaining things I would be able to pick it up that way but Ed Gordon laughed," Tighe said.

"It's just the kind of industry that you have to learn through experience. But those first 18 months were a tough experience, they were the bleakest 18 months of my professional career."

Tighe has done an admirable job in helping to dampen the difficulty associated with breaking into brokering by instituting CBRE some of the best training programs for young brokers in the industry. She even takes a select few under her wing, much the same way that Tighe's mentor, Carol Nelson, did for her early in her career.

Though training and education are important, Tighe is also a great example of the transcendent role talent, drive, and innate ability play in an individual's bid for elite success.

After all Tighe wasn't a finance major in college, nor did she get a law degree or MBA--academic distinctions that practically come as the price of admission in real estate these days. Tighe instead studied art history in college, working for the Smithsonian after graduation, then as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and then after that, as Arts Advisor to Vice President Walter Mondale.

She parlayed her experience in the fine arts and its culture into a career in broadcasting and during her tenure at ABC was appropriately charged with launching the A&E Channel, a network that became a landmark success thanks to her stellar leadership.

But the jet-setting lifestyle of a television executive proved to be too hectic for Tighe, who wanted to be able to spend more time with her son and husband rather than perpetually shuttle around the country.

Manhattan real estate seemed like a career as challenging and lucrative as the television industry but far more stationary.

"A lot of people think that I have even higher management ambitions here at CBRE," Tighe said. "That couldn't be further from the truth, I don't want to go anywhere but Manhattan, becoming a global executive is not for me."

Her educational background may not seem particularly related to real estate, but Tighe has hatched some of her biggest deals using the fine aesthetic sense she developed studying art.

"An artist is a person who enables others to view the world differently, through their eyes," Tighe said.

If Tighe hasn't accomplished this, no one has.

Foreseeing Time Square--before it had fully emerged from its days of seediness--as the natural location for the fusion of the fashion and media industries with class A office, Tighe convinced media heavyweight Conde Nast that it would make the ideal home for a new headquarters space.

With them in hand as a willing anchor tenant, she then approached Douglas Durst and initiated the development of landmark office building 4 Times Square, a tower that put an exclamation mark on Times Square's amazing revitalization.

Tighe exercised her unique artistic vision again more recently at 55 Water Street, when she orchestrated the conversion of a barren 1 acre riverside lot, which directly borders the building, into a park.

"I suggested that they hold a competition for a design for the space," Tighe said. "We received 83 proposals and chose a wonderful plan. Now that building is going to get a park that will boost its value and also be a great place for public use."

Tighe's accomplishments are all the more impressive considering her humble background. She grew up in a blue-collar family in the Bronx.

"My mother was a secretary for a rectory and my father was the manager of a warehouse," Tighe said. "Despite all the things that I've done, at heart I'll always be a girl from the Bronx."