My First Love

It is an interesting thing to look back on a 30-year career. Like so many others, I fell into Property Management. My first day with Lincoln Property Company was Valentine’s Day 1996. (Even typing a year that starts with 19 feels crazy! It feels like it was a different century… oh, wait! It was!! 😊 OK, moving on…) Looking back, Valentine’s Day feels so appropriate because this work that I have done for so long has been a love. It wasn’t my first love, though, professionally speaking.

When I started with Lincoln, I considered it my “day job” that would help fund my real love: higher education. At the time, I was still working on my undergraduate, taking a few classes at a time. As the years progressed, I graduated with an interdisciplinary focus on the History of Ideas and moved directly into my master’s level work in the same program. I will always be a huge advocate of interdisciplinary study. Beyond learning whatever the class subject might be, the real learning in interdisciplinary work lies in making connections between how topics intersect and influence one another. That skill has served me in a significant way throughout my career. I have often said that program taught me how to think and there is so much truth in that.

Seven years later, I graduated with my master’s degree and dove right into my PhD. I had a driving passion to be a professor, but hadn’t really thought much beyond that. It only took me a few weeks to realize there wasn’t any one thing I was interested in enough to study it at a PhD level. The academic work I had enjoyed so deeply for so many years suddenly had no more appeal. Following one fateful lunch, eating in my car – while having a very important conversation with myself – I realized Property Management was actually a pretty good gig and I decided to throw myself into it fully (after finishing the semester… because, of course).  

Property Management has been good to me, and I have done my best to be good right back. I loved learning the craft of managing buildings, engaging with the broader industry through IREM and BOMA, and have enjoyed being part of the evolution of the profession over the last 30 years. What has meant the most to me though? The people. Getting the opportunity to work with and lead some of the kindest, most talented, smartest people in the industry has been one of my greatest joys.

And along the way, I found the thing that I am most interested in – enough to study it at the PhD level. That one thing is MINDFUL LEADERSHIP, and that umbrella encompasses mindfulness, relationships, team leadership, and change. For the last five years, these have been the subjects I have studied as I have worked to complete the requirements for a PhD in Leadership & Change at Antioch University.

This academic work has supported my role as Director of Property Management at Granite Properties, allowing me to effectively contribute at the enterprise level and to support a strategic focus on change management and strong, relationship-oriented team leadership within the rapidly evolving Commercial Real Estate profession. It is my passion for this academic work that also guides me forward as I now seek to create something new.

We live in a world of chaos and complexity. We need strong leaders now more than ever, yet I think it may be harder to actually be a strong leader than ever before. I believe in the potential of leaders to create change, to build strong relationships, and to make a meaningful difference to their families, their teams, their companies, and their communities. But what I also know to be true is that for a leader to do all these great things, they must first take care of themselves.  

That is a lesson I have had to learn time and again on my own leadership journey. I have studied mindful leadership, and I have practiced mindful leadership. What I have learned is that there are many different ways to bring mindfulness into our day that have nothing to do with sitting on a cushion. There are easy ways to bring more regulation and resilience into our experience as individuals and as leaders, so that we can be our best in whatever way we choose to move in the world. That is what I am here to share with all of you.

I have found leadership to be a calling. We have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people we lead; however, we can’t pour into others from an empty cup. I am here to help you fill your cup and, hopefully, think differently about some of the things we face as Property Managers, leaders, and people. Welcome.