 Welcome to our open house and obviously you've done some research if you're here and you know that our real estate program is within the school of architecture, the graduate school of architecture planning and preservation at Columbia University. It is a program, a full time program that standalone undertakes three semesters, and you start in June and you complete your degree the following May. So it's a very efficient system, we believe, for undertaking dedicated real estate studies. Just so that you don't get confused at Columbia University, there's also the business school that does not offer a real estate specialization or real estate concentration, but they do offer a handful of real estate courses that you can do within an MBA. The difference with our degree is that we are totally dedicated to real estate to you learn all of the things you need to learn in business, but they are applied directly to real estate, and not to, you know, other types of business activities. I think that this gives you a much deeper understanding of real estate if this is your chosen area. This also enables you to form a community of amongst your classmates and with our alumni of people in the industry who are, you know, dedicated out there working on it, essentially form a big professional and business network. So we really think that that's invaluable for you as a, you know, as a, an option to become a real estate professional. So just before I get going people ask about the, the combination or the connections between these two entities providing real estate studies. There's no formal connection. There's no dual degree. What we do have is that we have a lot of business school students coming and taking courses in our program, elective courses, which we allow them to do. So if you find that there's something in the business school that's more generally about business, and you'd like to do that. You can of course, register and try and do that degree. However, our program is very, very rigorous and intense. And mostly you'll find that there's really not too much time to be taking in other things. So let's get started with talking about our program. I'm going to share screen here. This is it. I believe there we go. Okay. All right. We are within a school of architecture planning and preservation school of the built environment. And for this reason, we are not just treating real estate as a business as transactional activity. We are interested in the assets in addition to all of the financing, all of the investment and all of the trading opportunities. So we look at the build environment much more holistically. We believe that you come to our program to understand how you create and participate and invest and maintain and make money in this urban environment or in the environment of the built form. The objectives are as follows. Obviously, you know, we want to be the best program and we're constantly working at doing that by changing our courses, you know, modifying our courses. But particularly we have a rigorous and interdisciplinary curriculum. This is fundamental to what we're about. It's a very it is an intense degree. It's not, you know, easygoing. It's you're there to learn in three brief semesters. But it's, you will get significant deep dives and will find yourself incredibly well, very capable and, and well enough, cognizant of all of the things in the industry once you get out and take jobs. We are interdisciplinary in that we do look at the various other aspects of the built environment through the other programs in our school that includes architecture, urban planning, preservation and so on. We definitely have significant number of more courses in real estate than in an MBA. Plus we focus all our activities, our networking, our social events, our guest speakers and so on on real estate, rather than a more diluted situation in an MBA. I myself did my MBA at Harvard Business School. So I do know the limitations of MBA programs, and I do know that you're able to get a much more extended and extended in breadth and deeper dive in terms of knowledge and rigor in our program. We have outstanding faculty drawn from industry, we have full time professors and we have adjuncts who come in who are obviously working, practicing at the, at the core phase, and they provide you with not only knowledge but also their very real experience in how real estate works. New York City of course is we're very lucky to be here. It's a cutting edge of real estate of the real estate industry. Whether you're looking at the aspects of development, finance, investment, private equity, depth structuring, or even PropTech, which is now becoming a very important part of real estate investment in our activities. And we have a partner in New York City, Metaprop, which is one of the leading PropTech venture capitalists, capital firms, actually in the world. We have a global outlook, even though we're based in New York City and it's a fabulous laboratory to understand a lot of things about real estate. We realize that at least 50% of our students come from overseas, and we, we encourage them to be able to understand all of real estate with respect to their own backgrounds and their home countries. Plus we like to introduce all of the class to many of the global issues. And of course real estate though you will hear it's local, local, local. Of course today, the money flows globally, the interest in investment flows globally, even with the use of technology, offices and businesses and so on function globally. We are really keen that you get some literacy on the technology that's emerging in real estate. Real estate was a laggard in adopting technology, but now it's definitely utilizing it for very important things such as environmental sustainability, and so on. You will be involved in learning of those, those new initiative of those initiatives. Diverse network of alumni and industry contacts, we have now approximately, well at least more than 3000 alumni globally. You are able to get to know those alumni, some of them through being adjunct teachers, some of them being mentors, others coming in as guest speakers and others whom you meet just through our networking activities. I also have good contacts in industry I worked for 15 years on Wall Street and many of our professors also have been involved in, you know, broad industry activities, and they are able to pull in industry contacts major players in the industry to come and speak to you and tell you about, give you their perspective and tell you about the things that they've learned. Our location is our strength, as I say, New York City is a wonderful laboratory here, lots of new things have been tried out. People are very competitive. Things like finance are often at the very, very pointy end of what's happening in the industry, development technology is advancing here and so on. Additionally, as I say that being in the Graduate School of Architecture planning and preservation is a competitive advantage. We have professors on, we have our own full time professors, we have Professor Asher Katie there. And we have a professor Adam Levinsky, who are both people with planning slash architecture backgrounds, and they teach or they reach across into the urban planning studies and program. So not only are you able to reach across the study but we actually even have our faculty doing this connection. So you learn the environment in a number of ways. Finance, it's a tool, it's a central tool for real estate. And, you know, we are absolutely adamant that you become incredibly capable in financial analysis that doesn't just mean doing spreadsheet models and so on it means being critical and truly understanding and interrogating the financial models and what you, how you create those and how you utilize them in support of your arguments and your activities in real estate. Physical development, we do take much more seriously and involve you in the learning of that much more than typical business school real estate programs. So what schools are about business with within the physical environment. We really look at how our assets are active. What are our users, who are our users, what do our users do, how do they use the space and so on. What does that mean. And in a world that's dramatically changing and how we use our office space or workspace what that means today. Also working from home or how we use homes and also through to the you know the whole invigoration of many types of forms that used to only be for hospitality. We're finding that the physical function and the the actual understanding of the structure and how it works and how people use it and experience it is a key part to being innovative and creative, and even you know have insight into better investment opportunities than someone who just knows the numbers. We see development as a creative and responsible act we see real estate investing as a creative and responsible act today if you're investing in real estate you become a steward or a custodian of a building through its life cycle through the holding period. You become responsible for its environmental performance. You become responsible for the materials that are being used and may even need to be disposed of upon a building demolition. So the whole post the whole notion of real estate now, no matter what role you play in it is creative and is socially responsible. We have a connection with the business school we also you can see courses in the School of International and public affairs policy school at Columbia. Also we have a lot of connections with the computer science folks and the data science Institute. These are not none of these are formal, but we have obviously good opportunities to mix with those people. The program is absolutely committed to a diversity of a real estate professional. We don't know how real estate is going to be done in five years time 10 years time 50 years time. We do know that the built environments rapidly changing we do know that capital structures are rapidly changing people's attitude to to investing in real estate changes. One thing is to establish a very versatile professional that's able to take a take undertake a number of roles, depending upon the changes in the context. So we, we make sure that you are you were learning to be prepared for traditional or non traditional roles in real estate. Non traditional roles are you know associated with community land trusts with property technology and so on and things like that. We also, although we focus on giving you a very, very strong core education in real estate, very important that you now reach out to many other disciplines. Essentially you come you learn to be a real estate professional but then you add to it your particular interests in various other aspects. You know we have people who were interested in real estate and it's relationship to mental health, and so on so you can reach out to other disciplines and start to understand that intersection. You can work we, you know, we involve both the private and public sector in your education and therefore you have the option when you graduate to join either sectors or even be prepared for changing, moving between sectors throughout your life. That's happened to me it's happened to a number of our professors, and, and so on it's good to be able to embrace that. Also, you know to become entrepreneurs or go into a structured workplace. Some people start entrepreneurial activities in their during their program. They may have been doing entrepreneurial activities prior to their program and so on. Other people would like to go out and get some corporate experience learn how some of the bigger institutions undertake real estate. And, and so you, you're prepared for both. We have both local and global engagement. We utilize our alumni network globally. But we also obviously use our alum local alumni and industry contacts. We're very focused on your career development. This is not that we get to a job or, you know, you know, we're not, we're not a search firm, but we understand that you're doing a professional degree, and that your learning is very much to be a support for your career, not just when you first graduate, but throughout your career. So, we work with you on, you know, considering your skills when you come in, what you need to build, how you are going to include all possibilities to set yourself up to be a full professional upon graduation and, and then various training programs that Rebecca, Polymeter, speak to you in a minute about how she takes, takes you through that process. Our curriculum. Oh, community, I've lost a why they, but anyway, our curriculum is, you know, it's very hard to break it out and segment it, because real estate is really comprised of all these aspects that we've together. We have the financial we have the physical we have the delivery activities, you know how you actually undertake a transaction legally, what sort of entities you have to have to structure it, and also how you manage the development process. We do all of this, of course, within a with a lens that's really, really dedicated to the environmental sustainability of what we're working with that is the built environment and as you know it is currently one of the, you know, the biggest problems in terms of environmental sustainability, but also for you has tremendous opportunities communities we believe the real estate is about the provision of an asset for an environment for communities. So working with the communities and understanding community needs is absolutely key to the way in which you look at all of these activities. And as I say digital the new use the new use of technology is constantly growing. And so you will be incorporating that into your studies. While you undertake studies courses in these various activities. The idea is that towards the end you build synthesis you're able to pull together all of these many aspects of real estate person is like a conductor. You have to be able to be across all of the instruments of an orchestra and understand how they're pulled together to create a proper composition in terms of a real estate deal, a real estate development, or whatever part of real estate you're going to be active in. So synthesis is a very important thing that we have a view towards right from the outset, and that is that really takes place in a in a formal way in your final semester. So the semesters are just, you know, briefly like this, we have an intensive summer semester where you come in and you, you start with the fundamental building blocks of real estate. Basically real estate professional capability. Here, some of you will come with experience and background in some of these areas. Others will be in others. We really are keen at this point that you don't just come along and, you know, say, oh I already know that but you come along and be part of a community that is learning and learning together and helping each other in getting up to an understanding of all of these aspects. And so you're able to understand what all of your classmates are going to be about what people in the industry typically know and how they think about things, because you're going to be doing projects with your classmates. So even if you were an architect beforehand, you know, you, or you've been studying architecture, you need to learn how your classmates who haven't been doing that understand architecture and so on and similarly with finance. In semester, if you don't have too many electives there. In that semester. And, oh, sorry. You don't have too many electives. Those the ones that you do have a usually for a little extra deeper dive for those who don't have any background in a particular area. In semester now some of these course names have changed. These are just general descriptions of what the courses, the core courses are. So, you know, just be aware of that. So second semester, then we start pulling things together, you start actually taking these basic skills and putting them together to form projects. And how real estate transactions occur how investment decisions are made, how real estate developments are envisioned and planned and delivered, and so on. Also in this semester you continue your learning with some electives some electives are going to be, you know, supplementing your development of an area that you didn't know much before. You're going to be starting to provide you with deeper dives in areas that are particularly of interest to you. Sorry. In the, in the third semester, as I say this is where you pull up the things together, you do your own individual capstone projects which is a full development proposal of a property not just a transaction not just buying an existing building, but taking an existing building and proposing a major development or redevelopment, doing the conceptual notion of how that building will be in terms of physical form, functional use, and so on. Detailed financial analysis for both financing the building and for the development process. And then you know how to realize the profits at the end with a capitalization of, you know, of the future income. So the capstone project is, as I said, it's going to be an individual project selected from six or seven choices that you were given in New York City. And therefore you'll be competing against other classmates also doing a similar project. And it's a it's a very good professional thing for you to undertake and, and when you're out interviewing for jobs having that capstone project as a delivery deliverable is very, very compelling. You know, when you're talking someone about a job. You also are, you know, continuing to build your knowledge of the capital markets and financing. You're also really including a very important area today of the built environment that is affordable housing. And then you have lots of electives, including a part time internship, if you haven't had much prior work experience. So they're the major. That's the major breakdown of the various semesters, the general points of overview. I'm just going to pause there, and I'd like to introduce the faculty that we have here. So we have Kate Asher Professor Kate Asher. Hi there. Hi. Okay, we have Professor King, Cecily King. Good morning. Good. There she is. And we have Professor Munsell Christopher Munsell. Good morning everyone. Okay, and Professor Adam Lubinsky. Is he there. Oh no we've, we've, he's off for the moment. But anyway, Professor Lubinsky so we have their full time faculty. As I say we have a number of, we have about 60. We have a number of faculty, many of whom are our own alumni but others who are just leaders of their various areas in real estate. So any questions folks about, you know, these objectives, these class, these semester structures and so on. We've got a couple of things in, in, in the chat. Just be sure it's spring. What do you mean in spring? I responded by, I think, I think we're good. Is there any way that we could have the faculty who are here to say a minute or two about the classes they teach and, and their backgrounds to get a sense of that quickly. That'd be a great idea. Kate, would you like to Sure. Can you hear me. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have been teaching in the program for about a decade. And I tend to teach classes that as Professor Darrington mentioned, touch on planning and the process of development. So in the summer, I teach an urban planning class, which is an introduction to it's called the political environment of development, but it's all the context for the development work that you'll be studying and doing and it's meant to be an introduction to cities in general and the context of development in New York in specific. So it really touches both of those. And then in the fall, I teach a development analysis course that takes it one step further once you've learned the context. We start looking at a specific site in a neighborhood of New York and we walk you through the process of thinking about what the appropriate program might be for that site. It has financial considerations that has political considerations, community considerations, and a series of other things. So it's very much on the development side. But we also think about how you would put together the financing to make a project happen. So those are the core courses I teach and then I teach a series of electives from year to year some of them around transportation. I teach a DSG class, I teach a development history class so the electives tend to vary a little bit year to year and my background is both in public and private sectors. I worked for tornado a real estate investment trust I also worked for Mike Bloomberg when he was mayor for the Port Authority and Incorporate Finance so as Professor Darrington said we come from some of us come from both public and private sides. Is that okay Jessica. Excellent. Thank you Kate. So you, you're currently teaching a course you and Kate, you know take teaming a very core important course on development and pre development. Yes, so my name is Leslie King. I am a real estate developer and consultant I'm also an alum of the program I've been a professor I started out as adjunct faculty and now I'm full time faculty with the program I've been teaching with the program, just under two years. Because my focus really is around development, like Professor Darrington said like director Darrington said, one of the courses the core course that you'll see me for as part of the program is centered around the development process so how do you look at a site understand the options for the highest and best use for it, the community considerations layering that with the finance and and really prepare an investment memo, or development proposal, using the tools that we get to learn throughout the course of the program. It's, it really does overlap with the work that I do on a day to day basis and I try to tie that work into the electives. Professor said they can vary from year to year, but I really do center around real estate development and community and economic development so really real estate development as that tool for community and economic development. I work in a number of cities around the country. Detroit is where I've spent a lot of my professional life. And so I really do have a focus on how do you think about the tools for real estate and their impact on community. And so you'll see me for courses around affordable housing, equitable development. You'll also see some development case studies. And, um, yeah, that that's that's really kind of the breadth of what I've, I've focused on as a professor with this program with great amount of, you know, experience and on the ground every day. And Professor Chris Mansell is our finance professor. Thanks, Patrice likes Leslie also an alum of the program and started off as an as an adjunct professor and now here full time. I've taught in the program since 2017. I've done several courses in total but for is is what you'll most of you will have me for enough fall and spring semester. I teach real estate finance to, which is the second core real estate finance course, you'll take in the program along with underwriting so you're working on analyzing property financial statements, and ultimately coming up with with what they're worth and what you would pay for them. That leads into the spring semester, which is your third and final semester to drill state finance three the core. The third core real estate finance course, we'll talk about the capital markets as a whole, but with half the semester broken down on the debt transactional side of the business the second half of the semester on the equity side of the transactional business and then ultimately you'll come together with a project on on how you structure and raise a debt and equity for site that you'll select. I also teach an advanced placement course called advanced case studies a real estate analysis which is really focused on preparing students who want to go or at least want to understand more about the private equity universe and the day to day responsibilities that that they would encounter if they either worked in acquisitions and private equity or acquisitions for developer prior to Columbia I've just under 15 years professional experience both on the debt and equity sides of the business one for a no market institutional investor, and for a series of lenders before that, and I'm currently currently a principal at APRE which is a real estate consulting base practice. Thank you. Excellent Chris. So, wonderful now Jessica will I get back to maybe we'll continue on with the. I would just say if anyone has any questions for those faculty otherwise I think if we continue on with the presentation and then move right to Rebecca usually there's some career career questions. Right. Any questions for our professors and about that structure of the program the sequence and so on. No, all good. All right. Okay I'm just going to finish up with a few images of the types of activities we have. We obviously have a very good array of guest speakers, we talk about community development and so on. We have case studies, the students undertake where they specifically look into projects that have been completed and analyze and critique them. We have various significantly industry leaders come in and speak. We now have our annual conference, which we hold at the Pierre hotel. And this is where we have speakers such as Jonathan Gray and other major leaders will come and present and talk at that that's where you're able to start mingling with industry alumni industry professionals and so on. We have lunch box lectures we usually one a week, if not more, and we have here we have people that range from our own alumni through to other people out there in the various areas of real estate. We also have round tables where which we create as more of a dialogue where you're able to talk about various aspects with a speaker and hold an engaging dialogue. We also have panels where we have a number of participants focus on a particular topic. And here we have you know the lending in the real estate cycle which is always an important topic for real estate people. We also have, as I say, an important push to to understand what's going on globally. Our students come from those areas from variety of areas and we encourage them to speak about their countries and teach their classmates about what what the class what's happening back in their homes. But also, you know we have studied we have courses on cross border development, cross border financing, international rates, and so on. We also go to lots of companies for presentations about their projects and about their development activities. We will do site tours of specific developments particularly in New York. We, you know, we'll go to even major developments such as the rebuilding of seven World Trade Center by Larry Silverstein here. We attend conferences, we have variety of conferences where we where our students are able to go. And, you know, they're usually bonding things as well. In the spring we usually have study trips. These can, these will either be Asia, South America, Europe, and so on. Brazil is often a destination as our parts of China. Here's Hong Kong. We also absolutely adamant that you use this opportunity to build your professional network. So we have you get working with your classmates doing, forming clubs and activities, plus with alumni, your mentor with a you, you were given your get to work with a mentor one on one throughout the program. And, but you also meet lots of other alumni and are able to, you know, really make connections in the industry before you even graduate. So our mentor events where our mentors will come and meet with students. Very important for us, as I say is supporting you in thinking about your career and how you're going to approach that. We do invite in a lot of interested potential employers to come and speak about their companies on a day in the spring when you're ready to be looking for jobs. There's wonderful attendance and, you know, really great interaction with companies. Rebecca will speak more about how she posts the jobs that we are advised of that would be available to you and so on. Of course, lots of fun, lots of enjoyment, lots of relaxing and letting go of the tensions. And we do remember that we're here to form a community that is going to be visionary and creative about the future environment built environment. So thank you for that. I'm going to stop the share on that and we go back to Jessica, please. You're the commentator. Yeah. I just want to thank all the faculty for being here. I know some of you have meetings afterwards so if you have to jump off. Thanks for being here. And next we'll move on to Rebecca Anderson Palomita Rebecca has a long career in higher education administration, particularly around careers. The alumni know her they love her and we will turn it over to her. Hi everyone. I have been at GSAP now for will almost be seven years but I've been doing career development in the real estate arena for the last 10 prior to Columbia I was working at the NYU Shaq program which I know some of you might be considering. So if you have any questions about the differences between those programs I'd be happy to answer those my emails at the end of this presentation. I'm going to share my screen. Can you see that you can see it is everything okay can you can you view it. Yep, we can see that thanks. It's not letting me enter full screen. Okay, so I guess you know I want to start off by saying your career development while you're here at Columbia, you decide to come is basically an extra personal course each semester. It's your own personal course each semester so you don't obviously get any credit for but it's your own personal course. It takes time each semester there's different things I'll talk about a timeline, but it is my. It is my strategy to prepare buys guide and present employment opportunities to you. Individual career counseling sessions which I take pretty seriously. I was talking about the open house yesterday in person that I pride myself in meeting with you individually I pride myself in getting to know you getting to know your personal careers your backgrounds where you'd like to go every you know Jessica was just putting in the chat where we know the backgrounds that people come from. We get a lot of different backgrounds we get career changers and I feel like I'm pretty you know affluent in talking about all those different areas. We have career development sessions, like Professor during to mention we have a spring career fair, the career focus lectures, the mentorship program where you get paired with an alumni. We also have a spring internship program where the have the ability to partake in a part time internship in that last semester that you actually get credit for. We have our own job job board called G G SAP gateway, which is essentially like the LinkedIn for G SAP so it is something that is internal that just focuses on employment for all the programs that are within G SAP. You can connect with alumni within that there's resources, there's events through there so it's kind of like our own little little portal for you all. These are some of the things that you'll be learning learning during the year. This is a professional etiquette, you know, this is this program is an equivalent to an MBA so everything's very professional resume and cover letter writing your job search and how to search for opportunities in real estate, leveraging your LinkedIn and social media industry relationships salary, interviewing and proper presentation interview skills. This is just a quick snapshot like I said if you have any more specific questions feel free to email me. I want to know about the titles that students will receive after the program, whether it's roles in finance whether it's roles in development, because we have students who have different years of experience so there's different roles involved. This is just a snapshot of the positions in the areas for the class of 21. I won't have the class of 2022 out until six months after graduation. But I will say that I mentioned yesterday and the in person that there's more hybrid roles that are coming out in the hybrid roles touch finance and development. So it's a combination of both but if you decide to come to the program. We'll talk about how close you want to work to the asset that you're interested in so on. So we're going to be here the class of 2021 Professor Darrington has really made and Professor Montsell has really made the curriculum so finance heavy and it's so important. And we have a lot of students are interested in that but I will tell you we have plenty of students who go into the development side as well. We have a lot from family business. I will tell you this net this last class of class of 2022 there's more entrepreneurship so I guess that we have this is just a bulk of where the students go. So just an example of some of the firms that have hired from us in the last couple of years. I will say, typically we're at 65 to 70% of students will have a job by the time of graduation. There's about 10, it ranges but a 10 to 15% of students we have no idea where they go they go back home to their family businesses or to their countries. Typically I'm working with 10 to 15% you know within three months of graduation but our rate of hiring has been almost 90% within six months of graduation which we're very thankful for. One of the things I just want to mention quickly, there's going to put here in case you want to email me is as far as the timeline goes. Professor Daring was talking about how each semester the courses and the rigor. The first semester is typically you're focusing on your coursework, you are focusing on networking with your classmates and getting to know everybody that's in the program because that's going to be huge for you. After the programs over is building those friendships, and then researching areas of real estate that you're learning in the classroom. So you're kind of compiling things together. The second semester is really where you start to prepare yourself on paper. You want to narrow, we're going to narrow down your areas and trajectory in the fall. You can really begin networking in the fall and preparing and for and applying for full time roles in the spring. And then the third semester is more networking finding roles and actually applying participating in the spring internship program. And then obviously the annual conference but as Professor Darrington mentioned there's plenty of ways to network and really learn from so many different people alumni industry, but if anybody has any questions, feel free to email me. And I guess that's it Jessica unless anybody has any other questions.