I spent most of my time this summer working on a project for a single-family homes portfolio. I looked into opportunities to expand the affordable portfolio and also to reduce the carbon emissions of the existing portfolio. This fit into MSquared’s mission because it was advancing their relationship with a key partner and it was also advancing their understanding of the single-family homes market. In addition, I completed market research and competitive analysis for a few of their newer real estate development projects. This advanced their mission because it enabled them to move forward more quickly with potential deals. Finally, the team was fundraising this summer, so I did investor research and also applied some of my experience working in venture capital before school.

Throughout the summer I applied what I had learned in Capital Markets, Corporate Finance, and Real Estate Finance. These classes made me more fluent in the language that the rest of the team spoke. The classes also helped me to understand the complexities of financing structures and equity waterfalls we were working towards. Although I was not necessarily building the models, having knowledge about how they will need to be built in the future was critical in the way I approached the work. Furthermore, being in business school and being at Columbia in particular was the only way I could have had the opportunity to intern at MSquared. They were not recruiting from many other schools and they were only recruiting from business schools.

It was challenging to work remotely. I was particularly excited to be interning for Alicia Glen, who is a leader I’ve admired for many years. Working with her remotely was still an incredible experience, but there were fewer organic opportunities to learn from her. It also would have been nice to meet my colleagues. It was harder to work without knowing my team. Aside from this, I felt that it was challenging to not be able to visit the sites we were looking at. Real estate is normally such a tangible field, it was strange to have our travel limited by the pandemic.

This experience was incredibly important for me and likely changed the course of my career. It helped me realize the complexity of the housing crisis. To work in housing, I think I really need to develop a better understand of what creates inequality in cities. In my career, I think I would like to be deeply involved with the communities I am working in. As a result, I have enrolled in the Urban Planning program at Columbia and am now working on a dual degree. Perhaps after these degrees, I would even like to work in city government. The team at MSquared all worked in city government before MSquared and clearly apply that to their work. Mainly, it forced me to question some of the assumptions I had made about where I want my career to go and what impact I want to have on cities.