Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Michelle Boyd runs the Housing Lab at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. The Terner Center's mission is to formulate bold strategies to house families from all walks of life in vibrant, sustainable and affordable homes and communities. And in turn, the Housing Lab program was developed to support entrepreneurs trying to solve core problems in the housing market. The result is a business acc...

Jamison Manwaring is the co-founder and CEO of Neighborhood Ventures, a remarkable 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, with a growing pool of state residents who are permitted to invest through Arizona intrastate securities law. Nine...

Chris Gourlay is founder and CEO of Spacehive, the world's first crowdfunding platform for projects that improve the civic environment. Spacehive aids local fundraising efforts by matching them with funding sources from civic councils, companies and foundations. Over 45 of them. What makes Spacehive so unique is that it can positively impact a community far larger than just those who donate on the...

Mark DeSantis is a serial entrepreneur and past Pittsburgh mayoral candidate. Right now his talents are focussed on a startup called Bloomfield Technologies. They build robots that inspect valuable crops, like grapes, helping to predict crop outcomes and helping to manage crop disasters before they happen. Mark's robots are for rent. All over the world. He's certain they will help to produce more...

Samson Williams isn't one to think small. Having studied and worked in emergency management, he also holds a certificate in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Law, and worked in Dubai for two years at the cutting edge of financial technologies. Oh yeah, and he wrote two books on the space economy. Samson has worked in various roles as an advisor and strategist, serial entrepreneur, 'accidental investor...

You may recall Daniel Dus from Season 2 of the podcast. He wants to take luxury estates out of the hands of the 0.1% and into the hands of … well … everyone! The luxury estates that he restores will still be luxurious, but carbon neutral and available for middle class families to enjoy.  And Daniel is taking the democratization of these estates one step further by offering the community an opportu...

Anne Nickel Cannady was born and raised in Minnesota, but has lived an international life. Over the past 20 years she has worked in brand strategy, culture, innovation and immersive experience design with start-ups and leading brands that include Starbucks, Avalon Bay, Choice Hotels, Royal Caribbean and Honda, to name just a few. Anne is now challenging herself with a project that brings all her s...

Judi Lynn Brown is a self-professed 'world saver.' "It's a Buckminster Fuller thing," she says. One of a new generation of progressive change-makers in support of radical inclusion, Judi, a design strategist, decided to figure out a creative way to change a system that currently doesn't work for 100% of humanity. The organization she co-founded, CivicMakers, based in the Bay Area, is a design and...

Joanna Bartholomew, owner of O'Hara Developments, is a woman who's breaking all barriers.  Being a Black woman in the real estate industry is not quite enough of a challenge. On one hand, Joanna is focusing on broad community development by tackling decaying properties in East Baltimore (one block at a time) and breathing new life into them. On the other, she is committed to providing outreach to...

Two years ago, I didn't know that our audience would grow as it has. In fact, two years ago I wasn't sure we would have an audience at all. Now 10,000 people download episodes every month. That's 10,000 people who care about thoughtful and impactful real estate solutions.  Wow!  I am humbled that all of you want to listen in. This second year has been an opportunity to learn from yet another class...

Dr. Shannon Mudd is an economist and educator with a University of Chicago pedigree, specializing in microfinance and impact investment. He currently runs the Microfinance and Impact Investing Initiative program (Mi3 for short), which he founded about 8 years ago. One of his hottest classes teaches students how to invest $50,000 of real money for maximum social impact. This might seem trivial in t...

This episode was very popular in our first season. And since zoning issues continue to be recognized as one of the primary issues in the housing shortage, I thought we should revisit this insightful episode with Eric Kronberg. Eric is a principal at Kronberg Wall, an architecture and urban design firm based in Atlanta. They describe their work as conscious urban placemaking and they describe Eric...

Jonny Price has spent most of his working life in the world of microfinance, first at the nonprofit, Kiva, and now with the crowdfunding platform, Wefunder. He started his journey from management consultant to crowdfunding guru in 2009, as a volunteer with Kiva, on an externship from his consulting job. He made the full leap over in 2011, to lead the Kiva Zip pilot project, which later became Kiva...

Our episode, "Yes! In my Backyard," made it to the top of the charts. More of you downloaded this episode than any other to date. And since my guest, Patrick Quinton, is currently offering an opportunity to invest in his ADU's on SmallChange.co, we thought you might be interested in listening to Patrick's vision again. Dweller is Patrick's startup company. They create turnkey accessory dwelling un...

Charles Durrett is an architect often credited with introducing the concept of cohousing to the United States through his co-authored book, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves . Over a number of years, he has built a career around this idea - one he was introduced to as a student in Copenhagen. These Danish housing projects captured his imagination enough that he set about brin...

After a decade of building a career in real estate finance, from a pre-college stint as an analyst for an established D.C. development firm all the way to co-founding (with his brother, Ben) the first real estate crowdfunding platform, Fundrise, Dan Miller changed lanes....Sort of. In 2016, he founded Steward, an online platform which enables people to invest directly in sustainable farms. In a wa...

Beth Silverman is Executive Director of the Lotus Campaign, a nimble nonprofit startup focused on reducing homelessness. What makes the Lotus Campaign especially interesting is its approach to putting a roof over a homeless family's head. Instead of building ground up affordable homes, employing a bevy of subsidy financing, the Lotus Campaign is instead focusing on existing Class B apartment build...

An enquiring and eclectic background led A-P Hurd to where she is today - an in demand consultant solving very large real estate challenges, all focused on sustainability. Born and raised in Ottawa, journalism, finance, software startup, and novelist are all part of her career path. Not a straight path, but a very rewarding one. Then she decided to go to graduate school to further her engineering...

Today, I'm talking with Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings in Washington, D.C. Andre is also a scholar in residence at American University, a columnist for The Hechinger Report, and he writes for the Nation. But what really drives Andre is the seemingless impossible divide between blacks and whites in this country. He is focused in his recent work on the multiple issues impacting minority c...

Today I'm talking with David Peter Alan, journalist, intellectual property lawyer and all-around public transit advocate. David has worked for decades as an advocate for rail transportation, serving on boards, councils and committees. For two decades, he chaired the Lackawanna Coalition, an independent non-profit organization that advocates for better service for New Jersey riders. His expertise i...

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast or go to Patreon.com/rethinkrealestate to learn about special opportunities for my friends and followers and subscribe if you can. Today, I'm talking with Sam Ruben, who is passionate with a capital P, about sustainability. Sustainability is not just a moral principle for Sam. He...

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast or go to Patreon.com/rethinkrealestate to learn about special opportunities for my friends and followers and subscribe if you can. Andrew Luong,CEO and co-founder of Doorvest loves real estate. Growing up in a lower middle-class family, he decided early on that real estate would...

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE Eve Picker: [00:00:15] Hi there, thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. I'm on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. Real estate can help to solve climate change, can house people affordably, can create beautiful streetscapes, unify neighborhoods and enliven cities. So I'm on a journey to find the most creative thinkers...

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE Eve Picker: [00:00:14] Hi there, thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. I'm on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. Real estate can help to solve climate change, can house people affordably, can create beautiful streetscapes, unify neighborhoods and enliven cities. So I'm on a journey to find the most creative thinkers...

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE Eve Picker: [00:00:11] Hi there, thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. I'm on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. Real estate can help to solve climate change, can house people affordably, can create beautiful streetscapes, unify neighborhoods and enliven cities. So, I'm on a journey to find the most creative thinker...