Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Molly Meyer is democratizing the green roof. 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 must do. Green roofs are a big part of that. Molly wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a bu...

Bryan Lee may have studied architecture, but he's way more than an architect. He launched Colloqate Design to explore big, challenging and adamant ideas about equity in the built environment.  At Colloqate, everything is on the table - sustainability, community history, immigration, transportation, food security and housing values. The end goal is an equitable physical landscape. Bryan is a foundi...

NuMarket was born out of the pandemic. Ross Chanowski founded the social crowdfunding platform in 2020 because he felt there wasn't a way for communities to purposefully support the survival and growth of their local businesses. In an interview with The Boston Globe, Ross said that he wanted to develop a way for customers to meaningfully support the businesses they love while, yes, getting somethi...

A year ago we talked with Kevin Cavenaugh. In case you missed that conversation we recommend you take a listen. Kevin is a rare developer. Left brain, right brain, head and heart all come to bear on his wildly creative buildings. He has carved out a special place for himself in the Portland real estate world. He has said, "I'm tired of mocha-colored, vinyl-windowed boring. I can't change the fact...

Alex Lofton's mom was a school teacher. That's who he was thinking of when he founded Landed. Alex is on a mission to help essential professionals build financial security and buy homes in the communities they serve. By 'essential professionals' Alex means school teachers, like his mom, firefighters, police and healthcare professionals – all of those professionals that a city can't function withou...

Stephanie Blake is an historian at heart. That's what she studied at Yale, much to her parents dismay.  They didn't understand how she could leverage history into a career. But she has. In a big way.   Stephanie leads a company, Skylight Studios, that revels in reimagining enormously gorgeous and gritty vacant buildings. Millions of square feet of vacant commercial space and empty industrial build...

Majora Carter is truly a renaissance woman. Her career as urban revitalization strategist has spanned environment, economy, social mobility and real estate development, and her work has won major awards in each sector, including a MacArthur Genius grant. Majora's words are inscribed on the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture: "Nobody should have to move out of t...

Pooja Agrawal, architect and planner, is co-founder of the social enterprise Public Practice, and now serves as its CEO. Based in London, Public Practice creates placements for trained architects and planners in local government. Their goal is to build up the capacity of planning departments to respond to both the crisis of affordable housing, and to the shortage of skilled practitioners in the pu...

Adrian Washington says that until he was past 30 he had never even heard the term 'real estate developer.' Today he is known for over two decades of experience in urban real estate development, construction and management and the startup of several companies including the Neighborhood Development Company. 100% minority owned, NDC is a triple-bottom-line company, responsible for over 1 million sf o...

Jill Ferrari is all about creating impact where it is needed. An attorney with twenty-five years of real estate development and operations experience, she is also the co-founder of Renovare Development: a woman-owned, social impact, real estate development company focused on transformational projects in Michigan. To say Jill knows this space would be an understatement. She has worked in community...

Tracy Gabriel works at repairing urban environments. As president and executive director of the National Landing Business Improvement District in Northern Virginia, she puts her experience as an urbanist, planner and place-maker to work, daily, leading the ongoing makeover of the Crystal City with over $8B in private investment in the pipeline. Designed using the best practice principles for the 1...

Scottie Smith fell in love with real estate at just 19. By the time he was 21, he had invested in multiple properties and had numerous tenants. In 2011, Scottie founded SSA, a real estate brokerage, with just one other agent, and it has doubled in size, year over year, making SSA one of the fastest growing independent real estate brokerages in Texas. And if that's not enough, Scottie started a rea...

Tom De Simone is totally into community finance. He runs an $80 million community loan fund called Genesis LA. It's a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), which looks and feels like a bank (because they make loans), but with special 'super powers' reserved for triple bottom line projects and customers. CDFIs emerged in the 1990s, specifically to build capacity and projects in places...

John Green is working on a very big idea.   With well over a decade of experience in real estate and finance, John has co-founded Blackstar Stability, a program that uses a double-bottom line business model to create compelling risk-adjusted returns for investors, while generating significant benefits for low-income and middle-income families and communities. The program's roots go back to the 200...

Harri Holopainen has a mission - to define Next Generation Recycling.   A bit of a technology 'man for all seasons', Harri started his career in computer graphics on a Commodore 64. He worked on smart card payment systems, co-founded a small graphics software company, and even designed and implemented a prototype online gaming world, a subject he did his university thesis on. But in 2013, Harri st...

John Liss is running on fumes. He's up very early, every morning, building his company FAST. And he's doing something important and having fun.   John has always been fascinated by the real estate industry.  But more often than not, John says, people do not realize the true value of their real estate asset because the industry is ... a little sloppy. John has set out to solve that problem with the...

Travis Lee is a developer who fully believes in the local economy. After launching a career 'building big,' Travis came home to Dorchester, a vibrant and diverse community in Boston. Taking his role as a developer in the neighborhood seriously, Travis has worked closely with community groups and civic associations to conceive, plan, permit and construct his various projects. 100% of his built (or...

A year ago we talked with Avra Jain, an innovative developer based in the city of Miami. With a career path that had taken her from bond trading on Wall Street to developing properties along some of Miami's trendiest streets, Avra earned a reputation for identifying the next  it  neighborhood. While she works on very large scale projects, her passion lies squarely with the personal project portfol...

Saki Bailey, Executive Director of San Francisco Community Land Trust, is an expert in community land trusts, co-operatives and limited equity housing cooperatives. Plus, she has authored books on property law, community land trusts, and the commons.    In this podcast she breaks down how community land trusts emerged, how they have morphed from land to buildings, and how they are gaining (rapidly...

In early 2020, we talked to a remarkable architect, based in Melbourne, who has embraced an ethos of  "affordable and sustainable simultaneously." The result? Spectacular urban apartments, inexpensive to live in, with a waiting list of over 8,000 people. Jeremy McLeod is the founding director of Breathe Architecture, a world class architecture firm in Melbourne, Australia, with a reputation for de...

Joe Minicozzi has been recognized as one of the '100 Most Influential Urbanists' of all time. Although he trained as an architect and urban designer, the above honor was not bestowed for designing buildings or spaces. Joe's influence comes through data.   Joe's organization, Urban3, helps communities understand the economic impact of development – tracking data in the built environment, demystifyi...

Jonathan Cohen has made his mark. Though he started his professional life as an environmental engineer, Jonathan's true persona as a restless entrepreneur emerged when he tackled the remake of an historic building in Portland's Chinatown district. This project, in a building vacant for almost four decades, might have frightened most people, but Jonathan and his partners forged the building into so...

We're going to point you back to one of our golden oldies today because it's been an insanely popular podcast. If you missed it, here's another chance to listen. Sam Ruben is passionate with a capital P, about sustainability. Sustainability is not just a moral principle for Sam. He believes that as a core value, it can improve the bottom line and increase the brand value of any company. And Sam is...

Mott Smith is not a big box developer, at least not the big box that might spring to mind. His company, Amped Kitchens, rebuilds vacant warehouses into turnkey food production spaces. Think of it as an apartment building for commercial food producers, says Mott. This might sound straightforward to you, but it took two years working with the L.A. County, the Department of Public Health, Food Busine...

DC is a city where rents are running rampant and this only promises to get worse once Amazon's HQ2 fully opens. For Kimberly Driggins, this is a challenge worth taking on. She has had a remarkable career in urban planning and public policy, working on and in the cities she loves. And now she is turning her passion and energy to the challenging crisis that is touching so many people – housing.  Hea...