Long before Susan joined NMC as Chief Operating Officer (where she’s served brilliantly for the past seven years), her father gave her some life-changing advice. “I don’t care if you’re a ditch digger,” he said, “as long as you’re the BEST ditch digger.” Susan carried that be anything you want to be attitude from her childhood in Chicago to Purdue and Southern Illinois University and eventually to USC where she earned her MBA.
Susan’s real estate background is vast and significant. With more than 25 years of institutional asset management and investment advisory experience, paired with a strong track record of building and managing high-yielding teams, she has emerged as a veritable industry leader. She has overseen portfolios of more than 500 properties for both private and public companies.
She started as Vice President of Prudential Real Estate’s regional and mixed-use shopping centers, where she directed development, redevelopment and management of these properties. From there, she served as National Director of Asset Management at Burnham Pacific Properties, a public REIT, and was responsible for more than 10 million square feet of shopping centers and a team of 20 asset/property managers.
Later, she became a pension fund advisor for CalPERS, leading development, leasing, and management of various CalPERS shopping centers and multi-family assets, and then Senior Vice President at Centro-Watt, a private REIT, where she grew the portfolio to over $7 billion in assets spanning 39 states. Just before joining NewMark Merrill, Susan served at Shapell Industries managing joint venture relationships, creating strategic plans to unlock value, sourcing and nurturing new business opportunities, and supervising asset management and integrated disciplines.
In her role as COO, Susan has spearheaded many of NewMark Merrill’s initiatives to enhance the overall customer experience, creating collaborative synergy between operations and marketing. She has a distinctive mastery of deeply analyzing all facets of a project, synthesizing disparate data sets and infusing her thoughtful and personal approach to provide clear and concise direction to her team.
Susan has been inspired not only by her father, but also by formidable women like Julia Child and NASA’s Hidden Figures mathematicians. She has a fondness for music (Eric Clapton on guitar) and impressionist art (Van Gogh and Hockney) and she enjoys a full life outside of our doors – cooking, gardening, wine tasting and spending time with family and friends.