Joyce Shapiro has managed
institutional grade multi-asset portfolios, established restructuring groups,
ran business development teams, and developed the rationale, research, and
teams to rollout pioneering investment products. For twenty-five years,
on behalf of global premier financial institutions, she has held senior
positions within the hard asset investment management sector at Brookfield Asset
Management, LaSalle Investment Management, Franklin Templeton, The Long-Term
Credit Bank of Japan, Citibank, JP Morgan Investment Management, and RREEF.
Over her career, she has lived and
worked globally, managing assets and people, created innovative investment
products, developed the policies and procedures to successfully adapt an
investment platform into a global asset manager. As an asset manager, she
handled US $4 billion in portfolios. Furthermore, she restructured a
portfolio of US $30 billion in diverse, failed-asset obligations. She
participated in the development of new investment products on behalf of equity
exceeding $14 billion.
Currently she is developing an investment platform, incorporating best
practices from her premier employers, however now focusing on small sized
assets, on behalf of non-institutional investors. She also developed and
is teaching a Global Portfolio Development class for a masters’ program at
NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate and designed a curriculum for real estate
finance in Japan.
Joyce and I met during my years with
IREI - LaSalle Investment Management was one of my clients. Through that relationship I got to know Lynn Thurber, then Global CEO and now
Chairman of LaSalle and other members of that great team. One of the folks was Joyce. When you meet Joyce for the first time you
can’t help but smile…because she is always smiling! As we got to know each other we were
surprised that our paths hadn’t crossed before. That was a number of years back, before she was promoted to Global Head
of Capital Raising and Investors Relations.
Over the years we’ve become good friends and have acted as advisors to
each other as the twists and turns of life and career evolve.
Q. How did you get your start in the commercial
real estate industry?
A. Property management - learning
about the business of real estate directly from building operations. Responding to what is now an
anachronism, an ad in the New York Times. I convinced
someone that I had all of the skills, yet not the direct
experience, necessary to manage office buildings in Manhattan. The building, 130 West 42nd Street, then known as The Wurlitzer Building (now
Bush Tower), was my first assignment. Included in my portfolio was also
the building that housed the famous music / restaurant venue Max’s Kansas City
(think Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin)! After
two years of figuring things out, I intentionally sought a more
institutional approach to the real estate business and landed at RREEF, as part
of their first management team on the East coast. I can recall picking up Claude Rosenberg (the first R in RREEF) from the
airport and being grilled by him about my valuation of an industrial portfolio
in Hauppauge, New York (Long Island).
I took one more detour back to
direct management, when the then owner of The Chrysler Building, the
charismatic Jack Kent Cooke (a Canadian entrepreneur and former owner of the Washington Redskins, the
Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Kings) asked me to manage The
Chrysler Building and what was then known as The Kent Building (now
simply 666 Third Avenue). All of 24 years old, I felt I had
some flexibility in timing and decided to take on the challenge of managing one of the
world’s iconic and in my humble opinion, most beautiful buildings in the world.
It was the right decision for me, as I met my husband, Joshua in what was
The Cloud Club, a then defunct men’s club on the 66th-68th floors of The
Chrysler Building, when we held an art deco marketing event in the clouds!
From that point forward I worked for financial institutions, assuming
various roles in the real estate investment management industry: JP Morgan
Asset Management, Citibank, LaSalle Investment Management, Brookfield Asset
Management were the places where I was most likely to be found during my adult
life.
My initial role in the institutional real estate world was as an asset
manager. I have survived three downturns in our marketplace. About a
decade of my life was spent restructuring debt, partnerships and repositioning
assets around the world. I moved to Japan in the early 1990s and set up
a restructuring division in Tokyo and Sydney for a then very large Japanese
bank, The Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, learning to see our business from a
very different and very global vantage point was one of my most
rewarding experiences
Lynn Thurber (now Chairman of LaSalle Investment Management) asked me to
consider taking on a capital-raising role. I was reluctant at first, as I
truly believed being close to the properties was critical to the investment
process. I did make the transition, with a lot of great support from
LaSalle and my colleagues like Alan Braxton, whom I miss dearly. Well,
Lynn was right, I loved capital raising and fund product development. I
incorporated an asset approach, making certain I reviewed prospective
acquisition underwritings, attended investment committee meetings, and
developed business plans for our initiatives around the globe. Ultimately it
was an ideal way of gaining a much more expansive and inclusive role in the
business while also having a broader reach into a much larger portfolio of
assets.
Q. What advice would you give to someone who has
been in the industry for a short time or a student looking to get his or her
start?
A. I teach a course on global
portfolio development at New York University (NYU). I believe one
must look beyond one’s direct assignments and incorporate the bigger
picture of the economy, the organization you work for and all of the goals and
objectives of your constituents – primarily your investors. Thinking as a business leader creates leadership opportunities. In my class I make certain to incorporate that into the class materials the
“Business of Real Estate Investment Management.”
Q. As you look back on your career, is there
anything you wish you had done differently? If so, what?
A. I have learned that not every company suits
every individual. Companies have personalities and finding the right
organization and working with people who are compatible with your style
and ethics, how you believe business should be done is, to my mind, the number
one consideration. Having said that I was extremely fortunate to have
found groups, which gave me the opportunity to excel. Finding the right
environment is not always easy. When a situation doesn't provide the right fit,
sometimes the best solution is to move on.
Q. Who have been influences in
your career? How? Why?
A. I have been very fortunate to
have worked with many intelligent, thoughtful and supportive people.
There are a group of women who stand out as the kind of
leaders focused on bringing out the best from the people who are in their spheres. These leaders encouraged me to reach far beyond what I thought I was
capable of achieving.
The real estate "goddesses" were looking
out for me when they cleared the path for me to work for Lynn Thurber at
LaSalle Investment Management and Pat Goldstein at Citibank. I also had the
privilege of having the late Alice Connell, from TIAA-CREF and Marjorie Tsang from New
York State Common Retirement System, as clients.
They all encouraged me by example. Setting standards of excellence
for themselves, working hard and smart, while maintaining the highest levels of
integrity.
Lynn’s keen intellect made me reconsider and question my work,
with her framework of principled investing, preparation and client
concern. Pat was a very driven and smart investor and manager and a
brilliant strategist. Marjorie brought out the best in her managers, as
she too set very high standards of both business acumen and ethical behavior.
Alice was a wonderful mentor to many women. She was relentless in her
pursuit of knowledge and education, inspiring us all to go the extra mile, but
always with her witty sense of humor.
