Close Up With Michelle Wogan

We don’t call her the Queen of Greenspoint for nothing—Transwestern EVP Michelle Wogan just inked 50k SF at 333 North Belt, and has several large transactions pending nearby. We found out what earned her the title. (It wasn't anything Game of Thrones related, we think.)

Michelle—pictured in China—worked for a developer through her time at UT, and they encouraged her to go into brokerage in Houston. (Working through college was no big; she’d been working since she was 12.) She went through CBRE’s Wheel Program, which taught a bit of appraisal, mortgage banking, marketing, and brokerage. It paid $14k a year, so she had to keep a second job. But she fell in love with office leasing, and now heads a four-person team overseeing a 3M SF portfolio. (Sometimes she ventures beyond leasing, like the 40-acre sale she just brokered for a design/build.) In her decade at Transwestern, she’s closed over $500M. ($50M per year? Lebron James is jealous.)

Michelle tells us re-stacking 1700 West Loop 10 years ago—creating a 100k SF block for Christus—was her hardest deal ever. She’s represented office buildings all across Houston, but says her favorite is Centre at Cypress Creek. Besides being around the corner from her house, she loved working on a whole campus, and she got to be part of its 475k SF redevelopment and leasing over 275k SF. But she’s best known for her efforts in Greenspoint. She’s chairman of the board of the management district (above, she’s with former prez Jack Drake), and tells us leasing activity is up recently, as companies rush to fill Exxon’s vacancy. On the other hand, there are very few investment sales as owners wait for the dust to settle.

Michelle loves to ski, whether water or snow. Here she’s with her daughter Jessica and husband Adrian Heintjes (Michelle kept her maiden name for work but is a Heintjes in the neighborhood) in Breckenridge this year. On her bucket list is a family trip to Italy, France, and Holland (Adrian’s family is Dutch), and she hopes to go once Jessica graduates high school. Michelle tells us it took a long time to find balance in her life, but she’s proud to say she finally hit that stride between family, work, and philanthropy. (It helps to combine some, like when she speaks for the National Charity League with Jessica.)