By Ricardo Leite ’20

On Friday, February 22nd 2019, the Real Estate Association, the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate, and the Career Management Center of Columbia Business School, co-hosted the 10th annual Real Estate Career Forum.  The Career Forum offers first- and -second year Columbia MBA students the opportunity to meet and network with representatives from a myriad of different real estate companies.  The participating companies represented numerous real estate segments including development, private equity, REITs, and real estate technology startups.

Following welcome remarks from Gillian Dudeck ’19, VP of Careers for the Real Estate Association, Professor Tomasz Piskorski, Edward S. Gordon Associate Professor of Real Estate, Leanne Lachman, President of Lachman Associates and Executive-in-Residence at Columbia Business School, and David Sherman ’82, Co-Director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate, shared some details about the program and the class of students representatives would be meeting, and then formally welcomed the attendees.

Professor Piskorski elaborated on the extensive real estate coursework offered at Columbia Business School, referencing the challenging nature, diverse offerings and unique content of the real estate program. He highlighted that through these courses, students develop a strong fundamental understanding of real estate equity, debt, and public markets, which allows them to thrive in complex analytical and decision-making processes. He referenced the strong connection between the Real Estate Association and the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate in providing extracurricular programming to enrich the both the students’ educational and networking experience. He also detailed how Columbia Business School taps into the full potential of its New York City location to combine theory and practice, preparing students to make an immediate impact in their future roles.

Leanne Lachman highlighted the impressive achievements and qualifications of the current student body. She also expanded on the strength of the Columbia Business School alumni network as a key resource that enables students to generate further value to employers in their future roles. Finally, she thanked the company representatives for helping to expand Columbia’s deep connection to the larger global real estate community.

After nearly two hours of networking between students and companies, Daniel Gutierrez ’20, Co-AVP of Careers for the Real Estate Association, thanked everyone for their attendance and encouraged all attendees to participate in future Columbia Business School real estate events. The 10th annual Career Forum proved to be a successful event, continuing to forge even stronger ties between Columbia, its alumni network, and the larger real estate community.

Ricardo Leite ’20 worked as an Assistant Vice President at GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, where he led the execution of cross-border real estate investments in the office, industrial and retail sectors. Prior to that, he worked at Credit Suisse’s investment banking department, covering M&A transactions in energy and real estate. Ricardo graduated in Economics from Universidade de São Paulo. He is an MBA student and Columbia Fellow at Columbia Business School, where he also serves as co-AVP of Careers for the Real Estate Associ