New York Power Women 2014: Part 4

The penultimate day of our five-part series profiling the most powerful women in NYC commercial real estate (until Lena Dunham gets her real estate license). Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, and we'll wrap up this special series tomorrow, followed by a big bash to celebrate these extraordinary women tomorrow night (sorry folks, it's sold out).

Daun Paris
President, Eastern Consolidated

Daun, Eastern Consolidated's co-founder and strategic leader, sets the tone for mentoring, recruitment, and career development for her team of 60 brokers. And it's working. The company expects to broker $2B of deals this year (almost double two years ago) and just expanded into an additional floor at 355 Lex. Six months ago, it launched a retail leasing division with some of the biggest names in the biz, and it's since secured 39 exclusive listings and brokered 15 deals. This month, The Real Deal ranked Eastern second among retail tenant reps by square feet. The company also just debuted a capital advisory division. Daun tells us she's passionate about real estate because of the enormous potential for success and for the glamour, pace, and people who create the fabric of New York City.

Adelaide Polsinelli
Senior Director, Eastern Consolidated

Adelaide heads Eastern Consolidated's retail investment sales group and also does multifamily, office, development, and hospitality sales. She's known for chasing down business and always finishing deals, no matter how complicated. Noteworthy sales include The Hit Factory, 90 Chambers St, 119 Fulton St, 72-76 Greene St, and 711 Madison Ave. In the past year, she's brokered more than $400M in transactions. No wonder she's Eastern's Broker of the Year. Adelaide started in real estate in ’85, going to college at night, but says it took 25 years to find a “home” at Eastern in 2012.

Caroline Pardo
Director of Leasing, Jamestown

In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, between the Gowanus Expressway and New York Harbor, hiding from FiDi’s view behind Red Hook, is 6M SF of industrial space that Jamestown, Angelo Gordon, and Belvedere Capital are redoing as a neighborhood destination and a job incubator. Every day, Caroline, who heads leasing for the 16 buildings on 30 acres, meets with the development team, and will be doing so for a while, considering it's just a year into the 10-year project. Caroline says the recent Made in the USA and particularly the Made in Brooklyn movements launched just at the right time. In her first eight months on the project, industrial lease rates have risen from $10/SF to $15, and from $23 to as high as $35 for roof-deck access. In some other life, Caroline imagines opening a children’s play space or orphanage, a way to enjoy their innocence and passion for life—and that's coming from the mother of 4-year-old twin boys.

Jennifer Stewart
Managing Director of Global Real Estate,
JPMorgan Chase

Jennifer manages JPMorgan's wholesale business (corporate and investment bank, asset management, and commercial banking) real estate portfolio, totaling 16M SF across 695 sites. Those properties house 87,000 workers, and its annual occupancy expense is $1B. She returned to New York in '09 from JPMorgan’s London office, where she worked in the EMEA global real estate group and oversaw the core and shell fit-out of 5 Churchill Place in Canary Wharf. Prior to Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase's merger, she was a managing director and part of the development team for the 1.2M SF HQ at 383 Madison Ave. Her newest project, though, is still in its infancy: Jennifer recently gave birth to daughter Piper.

Raizy Haas
SVP of Project Management & Development, Extell

This year marks the 15th at Extell for Raizy, as well as 15 years since she began working on the assemblage for its just-opened One57 condos just south of Central Park. There’s not a corner of Manhattan she hasn’t influenced: the UES's Gatsby, Stanhope, and Lucida (the neighborhood's first LEED certified resi), the UWS's Ariel, Tribeca’s 45 Walker, 42nd Street’s Orion, Midtown’s International Gem Tower, and now the LES's 250 South St (the old Pathmark). Her career has been less about breaking the glass ceiling than about breaking the standard of how things are done. She advises young women to focus more on how to improve the development process, how to redefine zoning, and how to get the deal done.

Jodi Pulice
President, JRT Realty Group

As a reservation sales agent, the Staten Island native became top sales producer for Northwest Orient Airlines. Her connecting flight to commercial real estate started with Berley & Co, and then she founded her own company. (A career high point includes certification as a Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise.) She then strategically aligned with the larger Insignia/ESG (later acquired by CBRE) and later with C&W when chairman Bruce Mosler offered a diversity initiative for women and minorities. The partnership has helped Jodi grow her portfolio from 1.5M SF—when she was flying solo—to 50M SF. Collaborations with C&W leasing teams include 1 WTC, UN Federal Credit Union, TIAA-CREF, and Jamestown. She spends rare free time with her husband and two children and loves to travel the world.

Dottie Herman
CEO, Douglas Elliman

Under Dottie's leadership, Douglas Elliman has become New York's largest residential brokerage, with almost 5,000 brokers and 750 employees in over 70 offices in the five boroughs, Long Island, Westchester, Putnam, Los Angeles, and South Florida. (The firm also includes commercial and retail leasing/sales, new development consulting, and property management.) Dottie (here with colleague Jeffrey Rothstein) started on Long Island, purchasing Prudential Long Island Realty in '98 and then Douglas Elliman with partner Howard Lorber in '03. On Saturdays, she hosts morning radio show Eye on Real Estate on AM 970, and she's a longtime supporter of the American Heart Association, the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, Southampton Hospital, The New York Restoration Project, the Katz Institute for Women's Health and Katz Women's Hospital, and LIJ Medical Center.

Faith Hope Consolo
Chairman of Retail Leasing and Sales, Douglas Elliman

Faith may be known as NY retail queen, but her team now reps deals in every major city. 2014 was the year of the debut in NYC, she tells us: new tenants she’s recently brought here include menswear designer Caruso, golf menswear designer Peter Millar, jeweler Paul Morelli, luxury skincare purveyor OROGOLD, and Infinite Beauty. SoHo, Fifth, and Columbus Avenue also keep her busy. The 30-year industry vet’s advice: “There’s no shortcut. You have to stay on your game and be fully engaged because it never stops being hard work… There’s always somebody behind you who wants that deal.” And get out and meet people, she says, by joining orgs like ICSC and CREW. The art history major enjoys Pilates every weekend and is a music, theater, ballet, and art lover.

Jenna Gerstenlauer
Managing Partner, Sound Mark Partners

After 20 years in the industry and $800M of deals over four and a half years as CIO for CBRE Capital Partners, Jenna struck out with her own investment management firm, Sound Mark Partners, in September 2013. Making moderate-risk investment with mostly pension fund capital, her all-female company has made nine investments totaling $135M in NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Nashville, and Austin, including a Bronx multifamily portfolio and a new-build, retail, resi, and hotel property in Manhattan. Jenna left her Boston home for adventure at UC-Boulder and found it skiing Vail and Breckenridge. She also fell in love with Steamboat Springs but only recently got a taste of the impressive Aspen. Her husband is a New Yorker (we’re glad we weren’t at their house for the recent Red Sox/Yankees series), so they compromised and settled in Connecticut.

Nicola 'Nicky' Heryet
Principal, Cassidy Turley

When she moved to NYC in '76, Nicky was told to stay far away from Bryant Park. The area has done a 180, and now she often walks her clients through the park. The Brit began in tenant management on Central Park South in '77. In '03, she became the first female partner at Cassidy Turley. Her mix is 55% tenant/45% landlord. She reps The Kellwood Co and The Adler Group (including a repositioned 654 Madison Ave). She tells us she’s never been aware of a glass ceiling, but she can remember when a given commercial real estate event would have only seven to 10 women in attendance. Now it's not uncommon to see 70 to 100, she says.