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Leadership, location, investors—a successful real estate project needs all these to get off the ground. For nearly 25 years, students, faculty, and staff at Goizueta Business School have harnessed these fundamentals to organically and institutionally raise the national profile of Emory’s Real Estate program.
Professor Emeritus Roy T. Black, who retired in 2022, laid the groundwork for today’s success, alongside longstanding adjunct professors including Lyle Fogarty 03MBA, Hussain “Moos” Moosajee 07MBA, Tom Evans 12MBA, and Conor McNally, among others. Students and alumni have been building on that momentum, bringing energy and enthusiasm to support the evolution of the program.
Case in point: Last year, two dozen former students, led by Randy Evans 79MBA, raised a transformative $3 million endowment to fuel additional leadership of the program alongside Sergio Gárate, assistant finance professor and director of the program. A national search is now underway for a Distinguished Industry Professor to lead the Real Estate program into its next era. Now, the program is accelerating toward the future, embracing fresh ideas, innovative research, and industry collaboration to redefine what’s possible in real estate education.
Building Momentum
A big magnet for all of this is Atlanta’s thriving real estate market, Emory’s leadership, and the school’s location in the Southeastern region, which is rapidly expanding with commercial and residential developments. Atlanta is home to 16 Fortune 500 company headquarters with 75% of Fortune 1000 companies holding offices in the city.
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Adding to the momentum, the program has strong institutional support from Emory President Greg Fenves and John H. Harland Dean Gareth M. James, both prioritizing real estate as a key initiative for both Goizueta and Emory. In fact, Goizueta is currently laying the groundwork for a dedicated center, marking a new era of excellence in real estate education, thought leadership, and practice at the school.
“The energy and excitement surrounding real estate at Emory and Goizueta Business School are unmistakable,” says Robert C. Goddard III, chair of the Emory Board of Trustees.
With Goizueta’s expanding real estate program, the school is poised to become a premier hub for real estate education and thought leadership.
Robert C. Goddard III, Chair, Emory Board of Trustees
“Given Atlanta’s position as a thriving commercial and investment center—serving as the economic engine of the Southeast—our students and faculty have unparalleled access to a dynamic market, influential industry leaders, and a wealth of opportunities,” says Goddard. “We are building something truly extraordinary.”
A Conference Commands Attention
Undergraduates, MBA students, faculty, and Goizueta leadership have all stepped up to fuel the Real Estate program’s momentum and growth. One major source of that fuel has been the launch of the annual Emory Goizueta Real Estate Conference that now attracts more than 700 alumni, private equity, and developers from across the country and internationally.
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The new Distinguished Industry Professor will lead the center, with the historically sold-out annual Emory Goizueta Real Estate Conference as its signature event. This year’s conference, taking place on April 17, features Tyler Henritze, founder and managing partner of Town Lane, as the keynote speaker in a discussion moderated by Brian Budnick 02C and managing director of Eastdil Secured. They will be joined by many other industry powerhouses throughout the day, including Joseph Zidle 95C, senior managing director and chief investment strategist in the Private Wealth Solutions group at Blackstone.
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While earning their MBAs, John Schellhase 23EvMBA—associate vice president of investments at Peachtree Group—and Bernard Clevens 22MBA—principal at Thematic Capital Group—wanted to test their entrepreneurial limits (and the patience of their spouses) by creating a world-class real estate conference.
“We wanted to create a school sponsored conference that would both magnify the school and the city of Atlanta,” Schellhase says. “The true opportunity was to pair the strength of the alumni network with the real estate community in the fifth biggest city in the United States.”
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Schellhase and Clevens recruited alumni for panels and sponsorships. The buzz built as they secured CEOs of the “big four” Atlanta commercial real estate firms (Cousins, Jamestown, Portman, and T. Dallas Smith). Their pitch: Atlanta is an underrated national laboratory for real estate trends, and Emory and Goizueta graduates deserve to be recruited as hard as those from Columbia, Penn, and other top-ranked real estate programs.
Can You Get Me a Ticket?
Then, they went after the ungettable get as their keynote speaker, real estate tycoon Sam Zell.
“It’d be kind of hard to find anybody bigger than Sam Zell,” says Black, who calls the conference the most successful student-led real estate program in the country. “It was standing room only, and I had alumni calling and asking, ‘Can you get me a ticket?’”
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In the 2022 conference keynote, Zell predicted that inflation pressures “would create generational opportunities for a cadre of new investors,” Todd H. Rollins 93C 99MBA recalls. “Sadly, Zell passed away roughly a year later, and that takeaway is what you’re looking for at a conference like that. You’re looking to glean little nuggets of data and wisdom, and his legendary stature was surreal.”
Madison Williams 04MBA, now executive vice president of Investments at QTS Data Centers, believes the conference panels and organizers represent the servant leadership that differentiates Goizueta’s Real Estate program. Madison notes, “The Real Estate program at Emory is founded on integrity and helping your fellow classmates and alumni succeed. This comes across at the conference with exciting topics and great speakers for graduates, existing students, and industry veterans to learn from.”
The 2024 keynote speaker was Chris Lee 00C, partner and president of KKR’s global real estate business. At Emory College he majored in economics with a focus in math; real estate was not a business offering then. “The keynote address was a full circle moment,” he says.
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“Atlanta is one of the top 5 largest MSAs [metropolitan statistical areas] and a major real estate incubator of what is happening around the country,” Lee says. “The conference we launched is a huge opportunity for Emory to be a leader in the national real estate community. It’s a great academic program and city, and if you want talented young people who know real estate, Emory has a lot of them. I’m excited about what this conference and the Real Estate program will look like in a few years.”
Pizza Parties and Perfect Timing
Without highly motivated students and alumni, neither this pipeline nor this success would have been possible. In 1998, Todd Rollins 93C 99MBA, Dan Latshaw II 99MBA, and Arthur Lynn 99MBA started the Goizueta Real Estate Group (GREG).
“In our first few meetings, we decided next steps should include real estate programming, something more formal to develop our knowledge base,” says Rollins, now a portfolio manager for two flagship funds with Nuveen in New York. “That fledgling discussion evolved into finding a local professor to come in and teach us. Goizueta’s dean at the time, Thomas S. Robertson, embraced that idea.”
And so, the seed was planted.
“Looking back at this retrospectively, it is nothing short of amazing to see how this grassroots program has progressed with contributions from so many people over time,” Rollins adds.
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Enter Roy T. Black who had a PhD in real estate and finance and practiced real estate law for 15 years.
“Timing is crucial,” Black says about real estate success, and the same was true of arriving at Emory. He devoted the next nine years to building the Real Estate program “like it was a nonprofit business” with reciprocal benefits for students and alumni. He recruited students to his classes by offering them free pizza and connecting them with alumni for jobs; he persuaded alumni to sponsor the pizza parties as a recruitment pipeline and speak about topics like multifamily housing. “No one ever turned me down,” he says.
Randy Evans 79MBA always answered the call, having graduated long before Emory named the business school in 1994. “There weren’t many of us who wanted to go into real estate, and I went to see the dean who was the past chairman of Georgia-Pacific, who made a few phone calls and that’s how I got my first job,” he recalls. Today, Evans is managing director at Eastdil Secured. “I made a promise to myself that I would pay that forward.”
Lessons from Elvis and the Learning Lab
With props and costumes, Black vividly taught real estate principles by invoking Elvis and William the Conqueror.
To Black, experiential learning was key. Students didn’t just study real estate—they lived it. Atlanta served as a dynamic “learning lab” where students participated in site visits and hands-on projects, such as analyzing feasibility for new developments and tackling complex market research challenges.
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“My favorite project was researching the perfect spot in Atlanta to build a new Dunkin’ Donuts franchise,” says Erica Goldman 18BBA, principal at Blackstone. “That was so fun and taught me the fundamentals of real estate market analysis. Professor Black was both an incredible teacher and resource with relationships across the industry.”
Energized students “started planning events on their own, like tours of the Beltline,” Black says. “They toured the old Sears Building when it was still being renovated for Ponce City Market, with Jim Irwin 07MBA, who was head of development and in one of the very first Emory classes that I taught. There was still dust on the floor about three inches high and he showed us where everything was going to go.” Irwin is now president of New City, LLC and directs the company’s real estate development and consulting operations, as well as new business pursuits.
“The students came up with the ideas, and that was an important part of their education,” Black adds. “You’ve got to be proactive to succeed in the real estate business.”
Links in a Chain
As Goizueta students explored new ways to learn and engage, they could see how alumni were shaping Atlanta’s skyline. From the panoramic window in Dolive, a large meeting room in Goizueta’s east building, Black would point to the horizon. “You see that building? A former student manages it,” he’d say and tap the glass. “And for that one over there? One of our alums does the leasing.”
For Lyle Fogarty 03MBA, managing partner at Clover Investment Properties and an adjunct professor at Goizueta since 2006, the alumni network represents a huge area of strength for students ready to enter the field.
I tell students all the time if there is a commercial real estate company you admire, there is an extremely high probability that there is an Emory alumnus/a already there willing to return your call if you reach out.
Lyle Fogarty 03MBA, Goizueta adjunct professor & managing partner, Clover Investment Properties
“I don’t think that one week has gone by in the last 15 years that I haven’t heard from at least one fellow Emory grad or former student,” says Fogarty.
As Lyle looks toward the future, he is encouraged by the prospects of the program. “Atlanta is at its core a ‘real estate town.’ There are many great real estate programs at other schools around the nation and they are focused on growing and improving as well. We can learn from them and grow with them as well. But compared to other programs, our secret sauce is Atlanta which has a seemingly endless growth story which provides exceptional teaching and learning opportunities for students.”
An Expanding Program
Today, the courses and offerings for students continue to grow. More than 260 students participated in real estate classes in 2024, up from 157 in 2022. Graduate students can earn a real estate concentration in the MBA programs, and undergraduate BBAs enroll in the real estate depth program in the Finance department that focuses on the real estate industry, including development, market research, REITs, and capital markets, among other areas.
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Instructors in the Real Estate program work in the industry “so you’re going to get very hands-on information on working in commercial real estate,” says Gárate. “Our course offerings will help you get placed in pretty much any real estate private equity firm. Because of the branding, history, and quality of our real estate students, we have alumni now working at all the big real estate firms. Goizueta shows immense strength in capital markets, innovation, and development.”
Students have access to hands-on learning both in and outside the classroom that strengthens their skill sets and resumes. Last year, Goizueta started offering a Real Estate career trek to New York, providing students a unique opportunity to meet with top firms, explore career paths, and strengthen professional networks nationwide. Through the Real Estate Private Equity fund, students manage real-world investments. They look for opportunities to find undervalued REITs on the equity side and consistent returns to safely and consistently maintain the fund’s capital on the debt side.
For Tom Evans 12EvMBA, one of the founders of the Real Estate Private Equity Fund, it has been fulfilling to see the work he did in his student years paying off for a whole new generation. He is now managing partner of Toccoa Capital Management and an adjunct professor at Goizueta. “It’s rewarding to see that, over 13 years later, the fund is still going strong.”
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As Emory’s Real Estate program enters its next chapter, the strength and enthusiasm of its current student base and growing network signal a future as expansive as the skylines its alumni help shape. With a dedicated center on the horizon, a transformative endowment, new course offerings, and the energy of a thriving city like Atlanta, Goizueta Business School is poised to take its place as a powerhouse at the forefront of real estate excellence.
Interested in getting involved? Register for the Emory Goizueta Real Estate Conference on April 17. If you’d like to discuss partnering with Goizueta, hiring our students, or contributing your expertise, please reach out to Sergio Gárate.