Cathy Marcus:

I remember when I took this role and the person that was rotating out, he said to me, "The good news and bad news about this role is that it's a lot of exposure. The bad news is that you can be exposed." So I was always nervous, but that was a really, really interesting time. I did that for a while and I just knew if I didn't try something else that I would stay there forever. I was getting a little bit too comfortable.

Nancy Lashine:

Hello, and thanks for tuning into Real Estate Capital. I'm your host, Nancy Lashine of Park Madison Partners. Park Madison is a capital solutions and advisory firm serving the global institutional real estate business. Capital is the lifeblood of the real estate industry, but the decisions on where and how it's allocated are driven by people and personalities. Who are they? What motivates them? What have been their biggest successes and lessons learned throughout their careers?

On this show, we introduce you to some of the real estate industry's most influential thought leaders and decision-makers, and we talk about what is important to them, how they make critical decisions, who has influenced them, and a lot more. Our guest on this episode is Catherine Marcus, global chief operating officer and head of US equity at PGIM Real Estate. PGIM Real Estate is one of the longest tenured institutional investors in real estate dating back to 1970. Today, PGIM manages 210 billion of real estate assets, which makes them one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world.

Cathy joined PGIM 25 years ago and has risen to become one of the most recognized female leaders within the institutional real estate industry. She recently served as chairman of the board for the Pension Real Estate Association or PREA, and she's earned several accolades in the past year as well. She was recently named one of PERE's Women of Influence in Real Estate, as well as one of Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in Finance. When you listen to our discussion, you'll understand why. Our conversation begins with Cathy describing her career path and how she first got into real estate.

Cathy, what a great pleasure. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Why don't we start with you and your career if we can?

Cathy Marcus:

Sure.

Nancy Lashine:

Great. So tell us about your career progression at PGIM for starters.

Cathy Marcus:

So I have always been in real estate. I'm going to back up beyond PGIM. I was an undergraduate real estate finance major. I made that decision at the age of 17. People often ask me how I made that decision and what was my driving burning desire to be in real estate. What was that based on? The answer is I have really no idea. I have very little recollection of what made me choose that. I was in a business school and I always knew I wanted to do something finance-oriented. And even at a young age, I liked architecture, I liked the built environment. I'm someone who notices spaces and I appreciate space. And I think that was really what drove me to real estate. It was the tangibility of the asset class, which many of us say is the thing that drew us, but I think that's really what was very interesting to me.

And I also have a master's in real estate investment and development. So I am all in on real estate. I'm not qualified to do anything else. And I'm very, very lucky that I really love what I do because there really was no plan B for me.

I had a very typical beginning of my career. I was in an analyst program out of school, and I worked for... This is in the late 80s, so I'm very much dating myself even by the people I worked for. I worked for a company called Integrated Resources, which was a big syndicator.

Nancy Lashine:

The Zises.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes, the Zises.

Nancy Lashine:

Seymour and Sig Zises. Yeah, sure I remember those guys.

Cathy Marcus:

Exactly. Exactly. And that was quite an interesting time to be there. One of the things I really wish was that I was in that sort of environment not being so junior because I'm sure I would've just picked up on so much more, but I was so young and dumb and just really... I know that it was just such a storied place and so many huge characters there. And actually...

Nancy Lashine:

Young and dumb, I'm not sure I would ever, ever agree with that. So was that post the '86 Tax Act because that radically...

Cathy Marcus:

It was.

Nancy Lashine:

... transformed their business?

Cathy Marcus:

Just post that. So I graduated from college in 1987. I started there in the fall of '87. So there was also a little bit of a stock market issue, if you remember [inaudible 00:04:38].

Nancy Lashine:

Oh yeah, there was October. There was the October crash.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes.

Nancy Lashine:

Yeah.

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah. So it was a very interesting time to work for a syndicator, and I was not in a purely real estate role. I worked in, essentially you would call it now capital markets where I was in the group that did kind of the bridge financing for the real estate acquisitions to sort of fund them until the assets could be syndicated.

So these were $25,000 tickets from the likes in the day of Shearson Lehman, et cetera, all small-ticket retail syndication. So it took a while to sell all the units. So there was a strategy, all different kinds of financing, some asset level, actually some junk bonds. I got to sort of learn all about that. The commercial paper, sort of the heroine of the late 1980s with all of the borrowings that we did with all of the junk bonds essentially. And it was super interesting, very fast-paced environment.

And actually they did a lot more than just real estate. And of course I was only involved in real estate, but they also syndicated things like planes. I mean, anything that was a tax loss. And also movies and some other cultural, Broadway shows in some cases. And in fact, one of the big successes while I was there, and it was so apropos at the time, was that they had financed and syndicated some of the funding for Dirty Dancing. And so that really helped their track record during that time. But that was a super exciting time. And I wasn't there for very long, but one of the things that I...

Nancy Lashine:

It made a big impression on you, didn't it?

Cathy Marcus:

Huge impression. And part of it is that there were a lot of senior women there, and that was very unusual back then. And part of it was that Integrated had started, a lot of people who were attorneys started that firm and they came out of Proskauer back in the day. And there were a bunch of senior women who took such an interest in me and were so amazing mentors. And I came into this business really thinking that that was normal. And that was not normal. And really just strong women leaders who were great role models for me. And I think that's why it made such an impression on me.

Nancy Lashine:

I'm not sure where to go with that because what I'm thinking about is one of my good friends in business school ended up marrying, I think it was Sig, the younger of the two brothers.

Cathy Marcus:

Nancy.

Nancy Lashine:

Yes. Yeah.

Cathy Marcus:

Nancy.

Nancy Lashine:

That's right.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes.

Nancy Lashine:

And then a few years ago I was on a plane on my way to probably Johannesburg and I was sitting next to Seymour and what I believe might've been a second or not the first wife. Anyway, I mean, look, one of the reasons we're all in the real estate business is so many personalities and so many characters. But I know we don't have a lot of time and I want to make sure that we talk about... I mean, one of the things that's so interesting is obviously you'll say you started a lower-level job. You went to a firm that was Prudential, an insurance company, largely investing their general account and have obviously gone through a series of jobs as the firm has transitioned from an insurance company investing a general account to PGIM, which is obviously managing lots of other people's money as well. Can you give us kind of the highlights of different jobs that you took along the way that were really key learning moments for you as you've progressed to this incredible position?

Cathy Marcus:

Sure. So I joined PGIM in 1998, so I had already a bit of work experience. And when I joined PGIM, which at that point was called Prudential Real Estate Investors, the real estate equity business was separate from the lending business. And one of the main reasons for that is that the lending business was investing at that point really 100% general account money. And until very recently, that was mostly the case. Whereas on the equity side of the business, we were a third-party business for quite some time. And in fact, when Prudential went public in the late 90s in leading up to preparing to go from a mutual company to a public company, the way that the risk-based capital rules were working, it made no sense for the general account to invest in real estate equity anymore.

So I joined the equity side of the business and we were always since I had been their very third party. Our flagship fund, which actually I managed for quite some time, our core open-end fund was launched in 1970 with all third-party capital. Our core plus fund launched in 1980 with all third-party capital. So we have a long history on the equity side of the business, and on the debt side of the business, it's really been called the past five to seven years that has become much more of a third-party business.

The general account still has a real interest as many general accounts do in insurance companies, in real estate senior debt. But when you get to high-yield debt and you get to things that are more global, they have less of an appetite. And that's really where we feed our third-party business. But it is a very different culture in terms of being the real estate investment department of an insurance company versus a third-party investment manager. And you can see it. I see it in some competitor insurance companies, but you even see it within our firm that the part of our business that's set up to service the general account, it's just different. It's a different business. The focus is different. When you have to sing for your supper as you know, it's quite different than when someone is...

Nancy Lashine:

Are you suggesting that I know how to sing because I don't. But I know it's a metaphor. If you would, tell us a little bit more about you and the different roles in terms of being sort of at the deal level versus managing. What were the steps for you from investments to operations to... How did that evolve and how did that also evolve into your understanding how to think operationally or at the deal level versus strategically and in terms of managing people? I'm thinking more broadly.

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah. When I joined Prudential, I had almost entirely transactional experience. I hadn't done any asset management. It was really transactional, both on the debt and the equity side. I did workouts during the early to mid-90s. I did CMBS for a while. And when I came to Prudential, I came into a position that was much more kind of portfolio management-oriented. And I had done a very, very small amount of portfolio management prior.

And I really liked portfolio management. I still love that part of my career because it's a little bit of everything. You're making investment decisions, you're doing strategy, you're dealing with your clients, you're raising capital. It's really kind of rolls everything into one. So I did a little bit of that when I first joined Prudential, but then I went to our transactions team and I was the chief underwriter for all of our deals in the US. So I saw every deal in the United States, and I did that for a little over three years.

Nancy Lashine:

So does that mean that other people bring you their deals and then you have to review how they underwrote them and then sign off before it goes to investment committee?

Cathy Marcus:

Pretty much. So you're essentially an arm of the investment committee, and so you're reviewing the deals as they're coming in. And then when they come to investment committee, you are the one who's asking sort of the big-picture questions. The investment committee members are asking questions as well, but you prepare questions in advance so that if people have to rerun numbers, people aren't making things up on the fly. It's a very kind of strict process, if you will.

But when you are in that job, it's generally a rotation here and you see every single deal that comes in. And that was an amazing experience with me because I had a lot of experience on the West Coast and a lot of experience the New York, New Jersey area and South Florida. But other than that, there were large swaths of the country that I really hadn't done much in. And this got me into every single market and all asset types, value-add, core, development, existing. It was sort of everything, so it was really amazing.

Nancy Lashine:

How do you look at those kinds of deals and ask questions that... How do you worry that other people won't think your questions are stupid?

Cathy Marcus:

Well, that was always a big worry for me, frankly, because you are asking questions that are distributed to the investment committee.

Nancy Lashine:

Right.

Cathy Marcus:

And these are people who like me now have decades of experience. So I remember when I took this role and the person that was rotating out, he said to me, "The good news and bad news about this role is that it's a lot of exposure. The bad news is that you can be exposed." And so I was always nervous, but I really, really loved that role.

And then from there, when I rotated out, I rotated into PRSA. I was the first kind of assistant portfolio manager that the fund had. I was number three on the totem pole. And I stayed there for 10 years and ultimately managed the fund. I was there through the GFC, which was very interesting. I joined in 2004, so had kind of the happy run-up to the GFC and then worked my way through the GFC. And that was just a tremendous experience.

But that was a really, really interesting time. I did that for a while and I just knew if I didn't try something else, that I would stay there forever. I was getting a little bit too comfortable. And there's a rhythm to being a fund manager and you just start to fall into that rhythm. So our CEO approached me and asked me to be the COO, and unfortunately very typical for a woman, I said, "Actually, I don't think I'm qualified for that job."

Nancy Lashine:

Did you really?

Cathy Marcus:

I really did. And I said, "I only took two accounting classes undergrad. I took one accounting class in graduate school." And he said to me, "If I was looking for an accountant, you would not have been my first call." He was really looking for a partner. He was looking for an investment person to partner with.

Nancy Lashine:

Cathy, I hope every person, whoever wonders if they're qualified for a job who happens to hear this podcast will think about you when they have those thoughts because, yeah.

Cathy Marcus:

I tell every woman that story because it's embarrassing, but the only way to really spread the news is to just confess to it.

So I had a lot of trepidation about going over to the operational side of the business. You were asking about that transition. And I didn't really see the value of it and I was afraid that I was going to be kind of in the pink ghetto, if you will, that I would just become this then a white type COO. And so I made a deal with my boss and I said, "I'll do it because I trust you and you think this is a really good idea, but I'm only doing it for three years and three years I need a guaranteed ticket back to business. And I need to stay on all the investment committees. I can't let go of that. I still need to have client interaction."

So that was all good. And I ended up loving that job so much that when the three years were up and he said, "Okay, now you have to come back and run the US equity business," I'm like, "Well, I'm not done. There's still so much more that I have to do." So that's how I ended up with both roles, that we just kind of decided I would leverage myself as much as I could, which I have, and keep both roles. So it's really been great. It was a huge surprise how much I enjoyed the operational side of business.

Nancy Lashine:

So for those of us who haven't worked in an organization the size of PGIM, what does a COO do and how is that really different than an investment role?

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah, one thing about COOs is that essentially each role is a little bit different. Before I became a COO, I was reading a bunch of stuff, and essentially the COO is a completion strategy to the CEO. And so that's why I think every role is different. And so my role, and I think also because of my background probably has a little bit more investment and a little bit less operations than some just because of my background. I could pitch it and I do in a client meeting for my boss. So that's a little bit different.

But essentially my world as a COO is everyone in the company who's not investing capital or raising capital. And when I say investing capital, I also mean asset management and research. But anyone who's not either an originator or a transactions person or an asset manager. So it's everyone who keeps the trains on the tracks, and that includes things that are very typical, functional areas like finance and compliance and law. But also because of the type of business, I have investor services, which is great. I like the fact that I am sitting over the organization that takes care of our clients.

Nancy Lashine:

So you separate out investor services from capital raising?

Cathy Marcus:

We do. We didn't always. That's a fairly... I'm going to say the last 10 years, and when I took over as COO, we definitely made a hard difference, a hard separation.

Nancy Lashine:

And what was the thought process behind that?

Cathy Marcus:

The thought process? First of all, when we had everything together, it wasn't going that well in all honesty. And when you think about a lot of investor service, and I'm talking about filling out the consultant templates and onboarding clients and getting the statements out and getting the capital calls out, it's very process-driven. And there are not a lot of people who are really good at process or managing people who are good at process who are in a classic business development role. We even tried just hiring super process-oriented people, but then they were reporting to someone who had never been in an operational role. So we really separated it out.

Nancy Lashine:

I totally empathize with this, by the way.

Cathy Marcus:

I mean, it is the pain point of most organizations. But I really like the fact that I still sort of get to be involved with that because especially my background as a portfolio manager on a fund with 300 investors or thereabouts, you really have an appreciation for the investor experience, especially when you run an open-end fund because people can just take their money and go in most market environments.

And so I really like the fact that thinking about the client experience. And especially with some products that are a little bit more commodity-oriented, you could say the big open-end core funds are relative commodity products. You have to differentiate yourself in a way. And one of the ways that we've always differentiated ourselves is in our client service and our transparency, which is back to the client service of providing all kinds of information.

Nancy Lashine:

And how have you found the whole aspect of going global as a woman both in terms of managing senior people in other parts of the world, but also investor contact? If you walk into a meeting and maybe they weren't expecting you, but somebody else, do you sometimes bring other people as cover? And obviously certain parts of the world, there are just many fewer women in senior roles and maybe even a local woman wouldn't be allowed to go in without her head covered or something like that.

Cathy Marcus:

Exactly. Exactly. So sometimes it's good to have a buddy with you in some of these areas, but I've never had an experience that was anything other than made you chuckle. I mean, there was an interpreter and I walked in with my number two who was also a woman, and there was all this discussion in Japanese and very little interpreting coming back to me in English. And I was kind of like, "Okay, what are they talking about?" And it ends up the client was just so surprised of two women, and it's such a big fund and two women. And not in a mean way, but was so surprised that it turned into a whole discussion. So the world has changed so much for the better in the course of our careers, but there are still pockets where a senior woman who has a lot of responsibility is still shocking to some people.

Nancy Lashine:

Are there places when you go to visit them, particularly clients, where you would always take a guy with you just to keep it simple?

Cathy Marcus:

Yes. More kind of Middle East, I would say. In Japan, I might've said that before, five to 10 years ago. We do now have very successful business development reps in Japan who are women, and I'll go to a meeting just with them. But as an example, a couple of years ago I was an Azerbaijan and I got myself all into what should I wear, what should I do? I got there it was perfectly normal. It was very easy. So I think that sometimes you get yourself more worked up over some places, and especially with sophisticated investors, they're used to dealing with American or UK women, Western women, and they understand the difference between their culture and ours.

Nancy Lashine:

Great. So in the time that we have, I'd love to try to jump a little bit into how you think about strategy for this very large organization. I mean, my understanding is Prudential, now PGIM has long been early into what we call niche strategies.

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah.

Nancy Lashine:

And we all know that the Big 3 became the Big 4 property types. And now that pie chart is evolving with more and more subcategories of things like self-storage and manufactured housing and all kinds of niche strategies. How have you continued to evolve your thinking about building that part of the business? Are you doing it exclusively with operating partners? Are you thinking about platform investing primarily because it's so hard to build scale there? I've asked you a lot of questions in there, but I'm just like, "Let's move into that direction if we could."

Cathy Marcus:

Let's talk about alternative. So we have been very early movers in the "alternative" space, and I would say that our thinking has obviously evolved with the times, but not changed a lot in terms of the underlying investment thesis. So we started investing in self-storage in the late 90s and made a very big move in 2005 into storage in terms of all three of our large open-end funds. Did a public to private transaction with Extra Space Storage actually.

And at that time, the way that we were thinking about it is still the way I would say we think about the niche or alternative sectors, which is thinking about mispricing of risks. So at the time, in 2005 we made our first big, really big investment. The cap rate for self storage was 7.5. I'm dating myself obviously. The cap rate for multifamily was like 5.5, 6. And so you start thinking about, "Well why? Why is there that disconnect?" Because a lot of the secular trends and a lot of the economic drivers for storage and multifamily are quite similar. Multifamily doesn't require as much capital investment as office, but it's certainly a lot more than self-storage. When your storage tenant moves out, you just put a new lock on it, right? There's no lots of $150 TI packages.

The other thing is that if you think about apartments as compared to office, the rents can come to market very quickly, right? Within a year, your rents roll to market. Self-storage is within a month. So it's closer to hotels in that way. And so that's the thinking, it's the thinking for manufactured housing. It's the thinking actually around data centers. When we first got into data centers about 10 years ago that I think of the cash flows first. You think about the durability of the cash flow, what's the risk premium that should be there? And comparing how different asset types might react to different market environments.

I do think that... You mentioned the Big 3 becoming the Big 4. I mean, when you think about the fact that in my career, multifamily was not included in the Odyssey index, that's nuts, right? I mean, if you think about where it is now. But it's all about, I think that people were very hung up on labeling and that these labels of office, multifamily, retail, the labels they loomed larger in whether they were considered core, what the risk premium should be versus looking at the underlying cash flows. And I think that's really important.

And the other thing that we all have to remember, especially when you talk about some of the alternative parts of the living sectors, the world has changed. And so just straight up garden multifamily like we've been building forever, the world has gone beyond that. And the single-family rental market, the manufactured housing market, the student housing market, seniors housing, and the lack of affordable seniors housing, and there's seniors housing at the very high acuity end of the market, and then there's independent active adult. I think that you have to change your investment thesis as the needs of society change because the needs of society is essentially what is driving demand. And ultimately not to get too caught up in what something is versus how its cash flows are going to be impacted because that's essentially... We're investors. We're investing in a return for our investors, and the return is highly driven by the cash flows.

Nancy Lashine:

So you raise capital all over the globe. We're talking about investments really from a US-centric point of view, which makes sense. How would you characterize today in 2023 global capital flows coming either to your investments in the US or to your very large investors in Latin America? What would you say about global capital flows today?

Cathy Marcus:

They are a lot lower than they were, than they were over the past couple years. So we've obviously seen...

Nancy Lashine:

There's nothing funny about that, by the way.

Cathy Marcus:

I know. I know. We've seen a huge slowdown, and that's to be expected, that we had a really nice run while it lasted. I do think that there are more investors who have a global mindset, and I've seen that change over the past 15 to 20 years tremendously. People are just more comfortable. US investors in particular, much more comfortable investing outside the US. And actually people used to say, "I'm only leaving my home market for a huge return premium." And that's just not available generally now. And now people I think are appreciating the virtues of diversification more than anything, right? Trying to go where the growth is going to be and to have a diversified portfolio.

I would say that in terms of where a lot of people around the globe feel most comfortable investing these days, it is the US. The US is I think getting a disproportionate amount of capital flows right now. I mean, there's not much, but I think even investors who are on the sidelines but have plans to deploy, once values settle, I think there's going to be more deployment in the US than elsewhere, and that has more to do with economy and demand.

Nancy Lashine:

And are you seeing any differential in returns as you sit in an investment committee between investing in the US today versus say Latin America versus Europe? There used to be... I remember many years ago when global investing began, there was this idea of a risk premium for political risk. Are you seeing investors do that, whether they're going across borders or locally, or is it just too episodic to make any general comments about?

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah, I mean, I would say that there is still some of this risk premium around country currency. Currency is another one. Hedging has become extremely expensive for some currencies. And if you look at some investment performance, and I see this quite a bit, there's a very different return from a currency perspective. And that can blow your whole return. You can lose it through the currency.

So I do think there is still that, but it's not as much. And I would say that the happiest place in our business right now is Mexico because the industrial market is still on fire in Mexico. We have a huge portfolio. We run a FIBRA, which is like a Mexican REIT, that's 100% industrial and generally on the border and generally dollar denominated leases.

And there's still cap rates that start with a seven and an eight there, and that's a good thing. It's not like here where they're moving up. Your return on cost for development in Mexico is just tremendous, especially if you are in some of these markets like Tijuana in particular. It's 1% vacancy and has been like that for quite some time. But yet there's a premium there. If you were to buy an Amazon-occupied building in Southern California versus an Amazon-occupied building on the Mexico side of the border, there's a cap rate differential and some of that is currency. And you can take a little bit of that risk off the table by having a dollar denominated lease, but the spread in the cap rate is still there. And so that's interesting. That's an interesting thing to me in terms of how people price risk.

Nancy Lashine:

And many investors who've invested significantly in mainland China have stopped doing that. They may not be pulling out all their capital, but they're allowing it to naturally liquidate. What's your view about mainland China?

Cathy Marcus:

That's exactly where we are. And we have some Pan-Asian strategies. We have an open-end core fund and a close spend value-add series. And we're doing very little to nothing in China. And most of that right now is because our investors don't want us to. A lot of American investors, they will not invest in a fund right now that has an overt allocation to China. You can maybe get away with like 10% other or somehow get into China that way, but it's a lightning rod right now.

Nancy Lashine:

Right. Yep. And just circling back to something we were talking about briefly before, when you focus on these sort of niche or alternative strategies, and you do that with local partners, do you ever invest in those local partners or try to buy that business? Or do you just try to fund the deals?

Cathy Marcus:

In Europe, we've done a little bit more of that in terms of actually investing in a platform or funding a platform when there's a lift out or something. In the US, we have a huge stable of operating partners, and we would absolutely be interested in investing in a platform. Our business model has been more about, especially because we're very development-oriented, it's really been more about a typical JV structure with a promote type structure.

Nancy Lashine:

We could talk for a long time more about a lot of things, but maybe we'll just close with a lightning round series of questions, if that's okay.

Cathy Marcus:

Sure.

Nancy Lashine:

Who's had the greatest influence on your career?

Cathy Marcus:

In case she's listening, I'm going to say the name, a woman named Yvonne Compitello. She was my boss [inaudible 00:32:08]

Nancy Lashine:

Wafra.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes.

Nancy Lashine:

She was most recently at Wafra. Wow.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes. Yes. She was my boss at a company called Mutual Benefit Life, which was a defunct insurance company brought down by its real estate portfolio. And I went to work for Yvonne in the early to mid-90s, and we were the cleanup crew. And we foreclosed. We sold REO. This was all in the RTC days. And it was the most formative time in my career because first of all, I learned so much from her, but she had a work ethic that you just cannot compare to anything. And that taught me because I had such respect for her work ethic, and I like to think I continue that myself.

And she had a lot of faith in me. I was young. She had trust in me and faith in me. As I showed that I could do something, she just threw more and more and more at me and let me run with things. And I had no business really doing a lot of what I was doing, but I think she knew that I would deliver in the end with her support.

And one of the greatest lessons she taught me, which I just told a young person the other day, is she said, "You're going to have two kinds of managers in your life, and you have to decide also what kind of manager you're going to be. You're going to have a manager that when you're in an investment committee and the bullets come flying, they're either going to stand in front of you and be your shield, or they're going to use you as their shield." So those are the two categories of managers, and that was very true. So Yvonne was by far the most influential person in my career.

Nancy Lashine:

Wow. What a great opportunity and a great story.

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah.

Nancy Lashine:

Did that influence how you manage people?

Cathy Marcus:

I'd like to think so. I definitely learned a lot from her around letting other people shine, and that is, I think, a really, really important thing. And especially when you're dealing with women in particular, to let people shine, not to be that person who kind of sucks all the air out of the room.

Nancy Lashine:

Right. Right.

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah.

Nancy Lashine:

And you've been in the business for quite a while. What do you think is the best industry mentorship program, whether it's for women or people of color or just general mentorship, and what can we learn from it?

Cathy Marcus:

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I have found that mentorship program yet that I've participated in that is kind of the best. My view is that the unstructured mentorship, I have mentees all around the world and they're women that either I still work with or I used to work with and it's just more casual. Taking someone aside, you know they have a big presentation, practice with me on Zoom for two hours, just that kind of stuff. I find that to be so much more effective than... Several times I've been matched with mentees, and sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not. But I do think that just taking the initiative, because people did it for me, taking the initiative and just saying, "I know that you're nervous about this presentation. Do it in a mirror five times and then do it for me on Zoom." And having difficult conversations with people, I think that that's one of the most important parts of mentoring, that sometimes if you're in an artificial situation with being matched with someone, it's harder to deliver those messages and it's harder for them to hear.

Nancy Lashine:

Yeah, it is amazing how natural mentorship just forms by people seek you out or somebody works for you and you just click.

Cathy Marcus:

Right.

Nancy Lashine:

Cathy, it's such a pleasure to have you, and I feel like we could keep going, so I hope you will come back.

Cathy Marcus:

Definitely.

Nancy Lashine:

But any parting words for young people who are listening to this podcast that you'd like to share?

Cathy Marcus:

Yes, especially pursuing a career in real estate, I am a huge believer in doing a little bit of a lot of different things. I think that even if ultimately you know that you only want to be a portfolio manager, be in transactions, do some asset management, do some workouts. If you're only working in debt, get some equity experience and vice versa. I just think that even if you want to specialize, having a background that is diverse and having a little bit of that generalist skillset is really important in our business because the business evolves. If you were only doing transactions, acquisitions, you'd not have very much to do right now. And so being able to pitch in and do other things. The transactions person who can also be a workout person, that's great because then you can kind of flex back and forth. So that's my advice. Even if you really love something and you feel like you want to do it forever, try a few other things.

Nancy Lashine:

Well, Cathy, you are a great proof statement for that methodology, and obviously it's worked so well for you and thrilled for where you are and that you just love what you do every day, because at the end of the day, that makes you really, really good at it.

Cathy Marcus:

Yes.

Nancy Lashine:

And as far as I can tell, we only go around once, so keep smiling.

Cathy Marcus:

Great. [inaudible 00:37:01].

Nancy Lashine:

Thanks so much for joining us.

Cathy Marcus:

Thanks so much. It was a pleasure.

Nancy Lashine:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Real Estate Capital. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask. We put a lot of thought and effort into the show and making sure we bring you insights from real estate leaders that you don't normally find in the mainstream media. So if you're enjoying the show, please remember to follow it on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. We'd also love for you to share it with others or give us a review on Apple Podcasts so others can find us. Thanks again for tuning in. For more information about our firm, please visit our website at parkmadisonpartners.com.