January 6, 2009

Tell Us A Little About Yourself

I am a lawyer, adjunct professor and international lecturer. My three degrees are B.S. in Education, M.S. in Education Administration and Juris Doctor. I am best known as one of the first African American women to become partner in a major US law firm. When I left the firm in 2004, I became Corporation Counsel for the Janet Schirn Design Group, an international woman-owned commercial interior design and corporate art collection firm with offices in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. It was founded 40 years ago by a member of the Chicago Network.

I am President of the Chicago Economic Development Institute, which advises senior corporate leaders whose companies have a significant real estate component, on matters related to public affairs and real estate development. In addition, I am on the Board of Directors of CREW Chicago.

These opportunities have been brought to me through my experience as a Senior Fellow of the University of Texas-at-Dallas’ Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance and Positioning Women for Corporate Boards Program.

I am a former member of the Boards of both the Field Museum of Natural HistoryandLeadership America, the national leadership program for the Women’s Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

How did you find your way into the real estate field?

I began my career as a teacher but after law school worked in state government in a position where I worked on public finance transactions, structured public sector participation in industrial real estate transactions and worked with senior corporate executives to identify sites and public incentive packages for multi-million dollar industrial plants and businesses. After a corporation counsel position in a British–Israeli manufacturing company, I returned to the public sector where my responsibilities included oversight of workouts for a portfolio of commercial and industrial real estate assets. As Chief Legal Counsel to the State Treasurer, I managed the legal issues of a multi-billion dollar investment group of publicly held cash and real estate assets.

How Has Your Decision To Pursue Real Estate Law In General, And Your Current Position In Particular, Complemented Your Ideals? How Has It Compromised Them?

My decision to focus on real estate has allowed me to travel and work all over the world, meet international women leaders, and to pursue my personal interests in the arts and cultural activities. As most professional women would acknowledge, a career is a demanding “mistress” and like many women, sometimes I have sacrificed time with family in order to attain a level of excellence and achievement.

Your Success Has Clearly Made You A Role Model For Professional Women In All Fields. From Your Point Of View, How Has Being A Woman Affected Your Career To Date? What Challenges Has It Presented? How Much Have Those Challenges Changed With A) Time; And B) Your Progress Upward?

In my view, being a woman has been an advantage in my professional career. While there are certainly barriers that remain for women who enter traditionally male-dominated professions, I have found many opportunities for growth and development. Most of those were extended to me by men who served as mentors. I benefited from the fact that many of my male mentors in major law firms had daughters, wives, or sisters who were fighting against the same barriers and these men recognized the inherent unfairness of the business environment that rejected women’s talents and achievements. The tutorials they offered that were the most valuable to me were not on technical skills but on soft skills: how to negotiate the political environment of a law firm, how to develop as a leader and manage difficult professional situations, how to handle the demands of corporate senior executive clients and how to manage teams of lawyers in complex transactions.

How Has Your Involvement With CREW Helped You Professionally? What Does The Organization Do Particularly Well, And What Could It Do Better?

As the premier commercial real estate organization for women, CREW has presented me with the opportunity to engage with some of the most influential professionals in the real estate industry. It has been an honor to serve as Board Liaison to the Membership Committee. Our team hosted several events and recruited many women leaders which in 2008 resulted in unprecedented growth in membership. My collaboration with our Membership Committee has allowed me to exercise and develop my leadership skills. Also, I have been proud to serve as part of our successful leadership program planning. Hopefully, I have contributed to the development of new ideas and innovations for the support of our members. I hope that my legacy as a CREW Board member will be a continued record of membership growth, particularly when we expand our outreach with the support of membership and leadership program sponsors.

Finally, as we harmonize our research from the Membership Policy Task Force with the 2009 CREW Chicago Board’s

Strategic Plan, I will reach out to our members to encourage each of us to foster a renewed outreach to the diverse community of women in the commercial real estate disciplines. I believe CREW Chicago can achieve the vision articulated in the CREW Network’s 2005 study “Minding the Gap”. In 2009, acknowledging the challenging economic environment, its position still resonates as it asserted that men and women must champion diversity and work to recruit, retain and promote women and minorities for the most senior positions in our industry. Peoplef all backgrounds and disciplines must work together for the good of the global economy.