Pamela Westhoff Partner, Sheppard Mullin
Pamela Westhoff grew up around real estate, as her parents bought and sold fixer uppers during her childhood. She then majored in business and finance at Loyola Marymount, topping it with an MBA and JD from USC, which gives her a unique perspective from both the business and legal side, she says. As partner in Sheppard Mullin’s real estate, land use, and environmental practice group, she handles leasing, purchases, and sales for clients like Brookfield (whom she repped in Deloitte’s 113k SF lease at Gas Co Tower) and Citibank (in the sale of a city block in Glendale, which she worked on with Power Woman Laurie Lustig-Bower of CBRE). Her advice: Don’t just develop relationships with your clients, but the people on the other side of the table. “In deals, I put myself in the other party’s shoes and helps shape how I approach them and what I ask for.” Her children (with her husband of 32 years, Doug) are now following in her footsteps: her 29-year-old son Steven is also a lawyer, while her 25-year-old son Dylan (with her above) is an MBA student at Vanderbilt. Her big passion: running. She achieved her lifelong dream of running the Boston Marathon in April, and she’s headed to Peru next June for the Inca Trail Marathon to Machu Picchu (which involves training three days a week in an elevation room to handle being 9,000 feet high).
