Close Up With Chrissy Wilson

Although JLL SVP Chrissy Wilson is a busy woman--preleasing developments like 1885 St. James, two buildings in Springwoods Village with USAA and Patrinely, and Six Houston Center--she always takes time to stop and smell the roses (or anything else she can find to do outdoors).

Chrissy reluctantly left her home town of San Antonio for Houston in 1980 with thoughts of hurricanes and mosquitoes, she says. But as the daughter of a builder, she loved all the cranes here. So she got a temp job at Hines' 1100 Louisiana construction office and donned a hard hat. Her first job: The Horne Co and has been thrilled every day since to be in real estate and Houston. (But has she ever truly been able to switch loyalties from the Spurs to the Rockets?) She particularly loves that real estate is constantly changing; she’s been in the industry 34 years now and says each day has been different, and each new building or new market is like getting a new job.

Chrissy’s deals have ranged from 644 SF (her very first—it was ’81 and the client always wore leather pants) to the world’s largest lease of 2011 (1.3M SF to Shell). But she says size is irrelevant to her; the ones that stand out either involve particularly pleasant clients, or a lot of complicated moving parts (like 717 Texas—Enron’s collapse changed everything and turned that assignment into a creative one). Above, Chrissy with three of her kids, son-in-law, and her first grandchild.

Biggest achievement: c Chrissy tells us her biggest pride in her career was maintaining work/life balance (she doesn’t know how many SF she’s leased, but she knows she attended 325 of her kids’ sporting events in one year) and being a good model for her four kids (her son Gregory just graduated from A&M and told her he wants to follow in her footsteps). She’s already done all the stereotypical bucket list things—going to the Masters and the Kentucky Derby, running a marathon—but she would love to learn how to horseback ride and has yet to master her paddle board.