What You Don't Know About Karen Whitt
Photo: Karen (center) with Virginia Tech students Amy Cohen and Jack Senske at Colliers’ 2015 Americas Conference this week in Denver.
Position: President of Investor Services & Real Estate Management Services, USA
Location: Washington, DC
Responsibilities: Karen wears two hats at Colliers, heading its real estate management services (a 345M SF portfolio) and investor services, in which she focuses on strategically connecting Colliers’ retail, industrial, office, multifamily, brokerage, investment sales and property management groups with investor clients.
How She Got Involved in Property Management: After graduating Villanova (majoring in English, minoring in economics), she moved to San Diego to get her graduate degree in social work. She decided she wanted to work a little bit first, and interviewed with Janez Properties. “I loved the person I interviewed with, but had no idea what property management even was,” she says. She was hired on as a property assistant, and then started taking CPM classes at UC San Diego. She now has her CPM, RPA and CRE designations (and never did wind up pursuing social work).
Industry Extracurriculars: She’s on IREM’s Executive Council, NAR’s Commercial Board, BOMA’s National Advisory Council and in CREW Atlanta. Karen also participates in Virginia Tech’s real estate undergraduate program, where she serves on the Executive Committee for Industry Advisory and chairs its career board.
Daily Habit: Reads every day, whether alone or with her 4-year-old son.
Favorite Book: Currently The Alliance: Managing Talent in a Networked Age, co-written by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
Favorite Music: Anything that isn’t from Thomas the Tank Engine, she laughs. When she can get control of the radio in the car, she likes music along the lines of Bob Marley and Pharrell Williams. (“Happy” is favorite to listen to on the way to work.)
Favorite Movie: Life is Beautiful
Favorite Food: A toss-up between Mexican and sushi.
Favorite Restaurant: Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Café in Arlington, VA, which means she’s at home with her husband and son and not on the road.
Favorite Vacation: Renting a house on San Diego’s La Jolla Shores with her family and her annual girl’s trip to Turks and Caicos.
First Job: Pool lifeguard in New Jersey.
Job in Another Life: A secret shopper, since she loves customer service and giving input on how she would do things differently.
Item on Bucket List: Taking her son to all the countries she’s visited before; right now, he’s enchanted by Italy and keeps asking about The Colosseum. Karen’s brother is stationed overseas, so she has visited him in places like Tel Aviv and Serbia.
Family Life: Husband John Whitt, who’s also in real estate, 4-year-old-son Riley, and three black labs.
Startling Fact: Karen and her family foster dogs for DC's Lucky Dog Animal Rescue and have homed 300 pooches over the past five years. Two of her labs were former fosters.
