Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Micaela Connery is co-founder and CEO of The Kelsey, a non-profit focused on inclusive housing for people with disabilities. Micaela's lifelong advocacy grew out of her relationship with her late cousin and close friend, Kelsey Flynn O'Connor, who lived with multiple disabilities. As the two grew up together, Micaela saw firsthand the obstacles many disabled people face in accessing the same resou...

Lyneir Richardson is building Black wealth through community-owned shopping centers. He is planning to buy 16 community shopping centers and invite 1,000 small investors to co-own them with his company, Chicago TREND.    To accomplish this, Lyneir and his team have developed a rigorous set of criteria for finding and buying shopping centers in majority Black Demographics that are on the cusp of ch...

"Being a developer without believing in architecture and its fundamental principles is like being religious without believing in God." This is Philip Kafka's take on architecture and real estate. I recently got to talk with him about his work and I think you will be as wowed as I am. Philip has taken a position on rebuilding Detroit that is inspirational, innovative and rare. He's working in forgo...

Greg Howes is the co-founder of CutMyTimber, a fabricator of timber and steel components for the entire building industry. Their projects are spread as far as Alaska, Québec, and Australia, with production based in Portland, OR, with an office in Vancouver, BC.  They are able to make highly complex and efficient building systems available to both large and small companies, as well as to individual...

Three years ago, I interviewed the delightful Jeremy McCleod of Breathe Architecture, and today I'm lucky enough to interview him again. Jeremy founded Breathe, an architecture studio in Melbourne, Australia. There he delivers gorgeous and sustainable buildings to his clients. But Jeremy was unhappy with the ever-widening gap between those who have wealth and those who do not. So, he embarked on a...

Last summer we got to talk to Molly Meyer, a remarkable entrepreneur who wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a building, big or small. Why, you ask?   80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how to retrofit them economically, and easily, is a m...

Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman is an urban anthropologist. Want to know what that is? So did we! As an anthropologist, Katrina is curious about us – and why we behave the way we do in society and spaces. As an urbanist, she's passionate about our cities – and how we can make them better for us, mentally and physically. So she applies anthropological principles, research methods, and the lessons learne...

Adam Gower is the founder of GowerCrowd. On his platform he shares his decades of experience in finance and development, showing developers how to raise money online for real estate crowdfunding deals. Content-rich, the platform has educational materials and training courses for both developers and investors alike. Adam also hosts a podcast show called The Real Estate Crowdfunding Show, where he s...

Sandra Lupien is passionate about the potential of mass timber. As Director of MassTimber at Michigan State University in Lansing, a program focused on outreach, research and education, she is working to advance mass timber construction and manufacturing in the state of Michigan.  Sandra originally came to mass timber after exploring possible uses for wood ravaged by a beetle infestation, the resu...

It started with Tosha Wilson and her cousin wanting to open a laundromat with comfortable seating, fresh brewed coffee, a book room, and a yoga/meditation space. But they were turned down for every small business loan they applied for. In an interview, Tosha said, "Two professionals with decent jobs [and] good credit scores, and the bank basically told us, 'You don't have enough experience.'" Out...

Cedric Bobo is the co-founder of Project Destined, a non-profit that teaches minority teenagers the ins and outs of real estate investments. The name, Project Destined, was inspired by the 2016 film  Destined , which tells the story of a young boy who in one reality is a drug dealer, and in the other, a successful architect. The outcome of a single event determines the path the man pursues. Cedric...

Adewale Agboola is an astounding photographer with many  Fortune  500 clients. As a Black man he is in a minority in that profession. Only about 5% of professional photographers are Black. He is also a minority in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Only about 13% of the population in Portland is Black. But he and his partner, Cyrus Coleman, another successful artist who also lives in Portland, star...

Jamison Manwaring is enjoying success as the co-founder and CEO of Neighborhood Ventures, an innovative Arizona-based real estate crowdfunding company, focused on value-add multi-family properties. It's a real estate company for sure – they buy, hold and sell property. But the capital plan is innovative. Jamison went to business school and studied finance. He loved it enough to become president of...

Meet Julie Bargmann, the inaugural recipient of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, described as the landscape architecture equivalent of the Pritzker Prize, so it's a really big deal! What makes this most exciting is the work that is being honored. In 1992, Julie founded D.I.R.T studio – Dump It Right There – intent on regenerating contaminated and forgotten u...

Elizabeth Timme is no snowflake. Strong and outspoken with degrees in architecture under her belt, she's building an alternative career on the strong beliefs she holds. That great design should be a right, not a privilege. A third generation architect born in Texas with childhood years spent in Italy and West Indies, Elizabeth has made roots in L.A.. First, she co-founded La Mas in northeast L.A....

Allison Arieff was lucky enough to help launch Dwell magazine, first as founding senior editor and then editor in chief. During her tenure, the Design and Architecture magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and by that point, it had already become a ubiquitous read for an emergent design community, rekindling a design lifestyle boom for the 21st century. Since then, Allis...

Helle Søholt was just 28 years old in 2000 when she co-founded Gehl Architects with Jan Gehl, her professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Together, they built a commanding firm, now over two decades old. Gehl focuses on people first in urban design with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space. In 2016, Helle took over as CEO and the firm now has offices in...

Tracy Hadden Loh is biracial and has experienced inequity firsthand. Even as a young child, she knew something was wrong. Her career has been a purposeful exploration of how to fix things. These days Tracy is a Fellow with the Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro, a branch within the Brookings Institution. There, Tracy focuses on what interests her the most. She is an advocate...

Rebecca Möller has managed very big construction projects for her entire career. In fact, she's overseen more than 22 million square feet of commercial real estate worth over $10 billion in construction projects nationally. That's a lot. But now she is tackling an even bigger problem – the housing crisis in California. Recognizing the need for a scalable solution, Rebecca has designed, and is manu...

Early in his career, Jim Heid worked on humongous real estate projects all over the world as a management consultant. Over time, the diversity of places he lived and worked in shaped his appreciation of small, community-centric places with soul. He moved his head and heart from a loft in downtown San Francisco to the tiny 12,000-person town of Healdsburg in California, where he is building his the...

Brinda Devine wants to get back to basics. Early on in her real estate career, Brinda says she was often the only woman and/or Black person in the office, in meetings, at events, and even in classes.  Today, she has over 25 years of experience in real estate, having worked as VP of Asset Management for Acquest Development, and as Wayne State University's first Real Estate Officer.  In 2020 she sta...

Madelyne Kirch is the founder of Sun & Moon Marketing Communications in New York. What differentiates her agency is its focus on real estate. Madelyne founded her company in her basement with a $2,500 investment. That was almost 30 years ago, and the need for Sun & Moon's expertise hasn't waned, in part because developers are not schooled in marketing and generally need (serious) help. Over the ye...

David Kemper wanted to find a way to safeguard established renters against gentrification. His goal was to build a real-estate investment model that both stabilized existing rents and gave a voice to that community. The model he landed on, MINT (or Mixed-Income Neighborhood Trust), is a sophisticated and replicable ownership model. Each MINT develops, owns, and operates a rental housing and retail...

Early in his career Paul Rabinovitch worked as a tree planter in the reforestation industry, personally planting over 800,000 trees in Canada, where he grew up. That set the stage for the career he pursued, first as the Executive Director at The Nature Conservancy, and then as a founder of Terracycle Investments, a socially-conscious real estate firm. Now Paul heads up Real Estate Investment at Ne...

From an early age, Rico Quirindongo was interested in the impact of the built environment on people.  That's why he became an architect. But he sees an architect's role as much larger than just designing buildings with a useful life.  He believes every architect has an obligation, a responsibility to engage in a civic conversation for design justice - to absorb the history of a place and the needs...