Suzanne Hollander is dedicated to making sure FIU students are aware of the job opportunities in real estate. One way she accomplishes this is through her work with the Real Estate Leadership Speaker series.
The latest entry in the series took place last month on Friday, September 20 at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, and featured panelists from Starwood Capital, a $6.5 billion dollar NYSE publicly traded company based in Miami Beach.
Corporate division heads from Starwood – Adam Behlman (President, Starwood Property Trust’s Real Estate Investing & Servicing), Rich Highfield (President, Starwood Mortgage Capital), Jason Nick (Chief Investment Officer, LNR Partners LLC), Steven DeRose (Senior Vice President, Starwood Mortgage Capital), and Job Warshaw (Head of Special Servicing, LNR Partners LLC) – made up the panel. They discussed commercial-mortgage backed securities (CMBS), which are secured by mortgages on commercial properties rather than residential real estate.
The panel’s moderator was Hollander, an attorney and broker teaching real estate law, development and property rights at FIU’s Business School, Hollo School of Real Estate. She is also the school’s Jerome Bain Real Estate Institute Industry liaison, a position she has held for nearly ten years. The group of FIU faculty members associated with the Jerome Bain Real Estate Institute has been recognized as being in the “Top 20” in Real Estate Research. As liaison, she is charged with setting up the Biannual speaker series, including finding speakers, deciding on content, and creating questions for the panel, as well as the Annual Downtown Urban Property Development Boat Tour on the Miami River and the Annual Commercial Real Estate Women-on campus networking event.
The series has two goals, to introduce students to important career opportunities in real estate they might not have considered or known about, and to strengthen the relationship between the FIU community and the real estate community, especially in South Florida.
For example, says Hollander, “Starwood is one of the largest CMBS companies in the country, and they’re located in our backyard. Our students should know about this particular industry, should know that this particular type of corporate company is here, and should know about the internships and jobs they can offer.”
In fact, two of Hollander’s former graduate students, Bonnie Weintraub and Maddy Nwankwo, currently work at Starwood, and were present at the panel. Both women are graduates of FIU’s Master’s of International Real Estate graduate program. “This field has been traditionally male-dominated, and it’s encouraging and empowering to see more women entering the profession,” says Hollander, who is also a Faculty Fellow in the Office to Advance Women, Equity & Diversity. “Our students are helping to change the face of real estate.”
Rich Highfield, President of Starwood Mortgage Capital, agrees. “At Starwood, we have a number of employees that are graduates of FIU. We continue to recruit FIU students for our internship and analyst opportunities in an effort to find talented people that will form the next generation of leaders in our company.”
