With this in mind, a new collaboration spanning four schools across Fordham will revitalize the way real estate education is delivered at the University.

“Real estate is one of the largest industries in the city and in the country overall,” said Nestor Davidson, associate dean for academic affairs at the law school and co-director of the Fordham Urban Law Center.

“To be a successful real estate professional today, you have to be able to navigate multiple aspects—marketing, management, finance, law, policy. As a university, we’re well-suited to build that platform.”

Building that very platform is at the heart of FIRE, Davidson said. Its first objective has been to spotlight each school’s approach to substantive and pedagogical questions concerning real estate, and to examine how these approaches might formulate a holistic real estate education.

“This gets into questions of housing, of inequality, of what it means to be a city today,” Davidson said. “As the Jesuit university of New York City, Fordham has always been in the city and of the city… And, as a university, we have an obligation to engage with these questions.”

Second, FIRE has been reaching out to alumni from law, business, and the humanities who work in real estate to serve as resources and mentors for current Fordham students seeking careers in the industry.

The alumni will also benefit from the initiative, said Kevin Mirabile, DPS, clinical assistant professor of finance and business economics at the Gabelli School. Ultimately, the members of FIRE hope to establish executive education opportunities for working professionals.

These opportunities would be cross-disciplinary—much the same as the real estate industry itself.

“Once alumni graduate from their respective schools, the lines get blurred in terms of the actual work they do,” Mirabile said. “Often, a person in this field is called upon to have some legal knowledge, an understanding of urban economy, of accounting, and more.

“There’s a whole universe of people who go on to operate in a field outside of their original academic discipline or who need to manage people across disciplines. We think that’s an audience that would like to come back to Fordham for lifelong learning opportunities,” he said.

FIRE’s goals to offer continuing education and to align the University’s diverse real estate pedagogies are pertinent as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, said Rosemary Wakeman, PhD, director of the urban studies program. Real estate professionals will need to be prepared to grapple with these manifold challenges.

“It’s not just the number of people coming into cities, but what happens to the building and real estate industries under the pressures of housing demands, gentrification, commercial development,” Wakeman said.

“These are not just industry questions. These are also social and cultural questions, and they’re important ones for everyone involved… It’s an industry you have to deal with from a wide variety of lenses.” 

Good evening.

Thank you, Dean Mast, for the kind words. I would also like to thank you, Provost Freedman and Rose McSween for inviting me here tonight for this exciting milestone event for Fordham College.

This year marks the 30th year of my graduation from Fordham College of Arts and Sciences. Since that moment on I have been dabbling, exploring, and toiling in the field of real estate. During my undergraduate studies I had no understanding of the industry, no sense of its deep dimension, and certainly no inkling it could be the most exhilarating, challenging, and rewarding career path for me.

My serendipitous foray into real estate can be traced back to this fine institution and the political science department, where Dr. Bruce Berg suggested I apply for an NYC Urban Fellowship where between undergraduate and graduate work, a group of 20 would be chosen to experiment and experience public service. This highly competitive scholarship program was launched by then Mayor Koch as a recruitment tool to draw young and eager talent into public service before graduates flocked to the private sector.

With a wide, ambitious, and curious lens (compliments of Fordham), I opted for economic development. This is essentially real estate with public purpose. And so began my professional love affair with real estate. It has been in my veins ever since.

Today, this F.I.R.E. initiative is as important to our profession as it is to the school’s students. We are a country of cities, where for the first time ever in the history of the world, more people live in cities than not. The 21st century definition of livable cities is being crafted, honed, debated, and drawn up. In every city across the globe, with every large-scale development plan; every rezoning initiative; every new building design; every new infrastructure undertaking; every new commercial lending program; every bull run and every bear market, the business of real estate is at play.

What makes our field so captivating, so impactful and so meaningful is that real estate thrives at the intersection of so many subject matter experts–to launch a single project, the business will tap into every Zip Code from architects, engineers, planners, lenders, and insurers.

Real estate has critical relevance to both the public and private sectors–forging deeply complex partnerships that have the power to transform and improve the human condition in ways that are concrete, tangible, and impacted.

I think about how fortunate I was, thanks to Dr. Berg, to let real estate find me. I think often about how many young minds would be drawn to the field if they only knew… F.I.R.E.will ignite passion and purpose into the minds and hearts of Fordham students; it will tap into and unleash its formidable alumni base, and finally it will, in the true Jesuit tradition, bring enlightenment and understanding, ensuring that the level of play in our business is held to the highest possible standard.

Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of this exciting moment.

— MaryAnne Gilmartin