MADISON, WI — The day is Thursday, January 30th in the new year of 2025. The sun has set on the city and greater isthmus, yet the students are abuzz with activity.
Look no further than the Pyle Center, where the Real Estate Club at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is hosting their kick-off meeting for the spring semester.
The real estate program and Real Estate Club at Wisconsin boasts a storied reputation. Per their club website:
“The University of Wisconsin is home to the oldest undergraduate program in Real Estate and the oldest graduate program in Real Estate in the United States.”
“The Real Estate Club began here in the late 1970s and has grown to be one of the largest student-run organizations on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Open to both graduate and undergraduate students, the club meets monthly to hear from real estate professionals and practitioners. Our speakers cover a wide range of topics including the debt markets, development, REITs, green building, and institutional trends. As one of the top-ranked undergraduate programs and one of the top-ranked MBA programs in the country, we facilitate countless opportunities to engage lecturers, guests, and alumni from across the globe.”
“We are proud to work closely with the Wisconsin Real Estate Alumni Association to continue the Badger tradition of connecting our students with networking opportunities within the Real Estate industry.”
We at the Review would like to thank the Real Estate Club, and its co-presidents Mitchell Carroll and Will Ross, for inviting us to cover this event and sitting down with us afterwards for an interview.
Once attendees pass the coat check, check-in desk and mini bar, they enter into the main room of the event. The main room is divided into two sections, with the front filled with seats facing the speaker platform and the back with tables of food and refreshments, and bar tables scattered throughout for socializing. In total, there were likely over 200 attendees.
This is a marquee event for the Real Estate Club, as they have arranged a star-studded panel of speakers, all alumni from Wisconsin.
These speakers are:
- Jay Rosenberg, Head of Public Real Assets and Portfolio Manager at Nuveen
- Jonathan Brown, Executive Director of Real Estate Banking at JPMorganChase
- Joseph Betlej, Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Securian Asset Management
- Ken Statz, Managing Director at Security Capital Research & Management, Inc.
These four alumni were touted of having a collective experience spanning 140 years in real estate.
The panel began at 7:15PM, with doors opening an hour early for members to socialize. Once everyone was seated or situated, Mitchell and Will took the podium.
Between the two of them, they presented issues like the upcoming speaker series for the spring semester, a career fair preparation event, upcoming club social events, their upcoming semester trek to Denver, a tutoring program at the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate, and membership and scholarship details for the Wisconsin Real Estate Alumni Association (WREAA). The common theme connecting it all was the club’s focus on student development opportunities and landing internships and jobs for their members.
Then, the four alumni panelists got onstage and are seated facing the 200 attendees, their backdrop the Madison sidewalk and street.
A professor introduces them to the audience as industry titans who collectively managed billions in capital, and their amazing success in a sector that recently grew to $1.4 trillion. The conversation centered about REITs, known as real estate investment trusts, and touched on the school AREIT and ASAP programs, legendary faculty members and their personal mentors Steve Hawk and Jim Graaskamp, real estate investing and other infrastructure assets, and ended with a few questions about their school ties and their life lessons.
Some key points include creating a network to help you piece the puzzle together, finding a mentor that is willing to work hard and spend time for you, and asking strong questions about how to interact with trends you see in life.
“I don’t know a single real estate alum who wouldn’t give a student thirty minutes to talk.” — Ken Statz
After the panel ended, club presidents Mitchell and Will were kind enough to sit and answer a few questions with us. Below is a polished, edited transcript of the conversation.
- For those that may not know you, can you please describe yourself in terms of your major, hometown, fun fact, role in this club?
Mitchell: From Boston, big East Coast guy, I grew up born and raised there. Came to Wisconsin, was really infatuated with the real estate program, but also just how fun the school is. The work hard, play hard culture. Best decision I ever made, it’s the school that fits me best. I’m a finance and real estate double major, I’m currently a senior, about to graduate in May 2025. I’m going be working at JPMorgan in New York, doing more of the lending and M&A advisory for public REITs, so kind of what this meeting today was about. I’m very big on new experiences, trying different things, traveling to a new country, all that kind of stuff is what makes you a person and what makes life so special.
Will: My name is Will Ross, I’m from Wisconsin, I’m actually from just north of Lake Mendota. I started my undergraduate career at St. Louis University playing baseball, studying finance. I transferred here my junior year, debating if I wanted to do finance or real estate. I think real estate really just stuck out to me because of the more personal aspect and the connection-based industry that it is. Joining the Real Estate Club and seeing that in action, going on trips, really opened my eyes on how the industry works. It’s not all about the numbers, and obviously creating value is a big thing, but you want to create value with people you trust and you get along with, whether that’s through case competitions, tutoring, extracurriculars through the school or here at the Real Estate Club.
- Could you describe the average person you would usually see at these meetings? And then, could you talk about the future of what you want this club to be after you guys graduate?
Mitchell: I’ll guess I’ll start with who’s the average member. [It’s] someone interested in real estate. Most of the people we see don’t really know what they want to do. They’re either in a major for it or looking to apply to the business school, or a finance major that wants to look at real estate as an option. They come to these meetings because they get a wide breadth of different industries within real estate. They get to hear from different perspectives and they get to figure out what kind of path they want to take. Both Will and I love talking to those types of people because they’re the ones that you can really inspire and show them, this is where you can take your career in real estate if you want to choose that avenue. We look for members that see [the panelists] and get inspired and say, “I want to be on that stage at some point. I want to achieve great things in real estate, and this is something to consider further on.”
Will: Like Mitch said, the ideal member doesn’t necessarily have to be someone that’s majoring in real estate. There’s a lot of economics majors, finance majors, risk management and insurance, pretty much any major that has taken a real estate class, or has family in real estate and thinks it would be interesting to hear from industry professionals. Mitch and I like getting to know somebody who’s going to work on Wall Street or for some investment bank, just getting to know people that are going to work in related careers. But we all want to come out and learn and do something outside of the classroom, showing that extra dedication. When Mitch and I were younger members in this club, we liked seeing the alumni come back and give back to the program after having such a successful career. It was really the motivating force behind everything. We came from social chair positions, where we innovated more volunteering events and upped the social game of the club a bit. At the end of the day, the club is a machine and we try to be the best stewards we can when it’s our turn to be in charge. Going forward, we need to stress how important it is for all the members to connect with each other.
Mitchell: I want to place some emphasis on how much real estate is a social game. It is a very social industry. You have to have some level of interpersonal skills to succeed in it. We don’t look for a very specific personality type, but we do look for people that are willing to interact with other people and willing to have fun because it is a lot of work hard play hard culture, which is kind of what Wisconsin is, honestly. That’s why it’s such a good real estate program. We do look for those people that stay after meetings, want to interact with our speakers, network with them, come to KK with us.
Will: The ideal person that we know in the Real Estate Club and moving forward is one, you can trust them. That’s a huge thing in real estate. And I think the second part is just that they are real and open, and fun to hang out with outside of work. Because people want to work with people, they don’t work to work with robots.
Mitchell: It’s like the elevator or the airport test. If you are stuck in an airport with someone for 12 hours, would you rather be stuck with someone that doesn’t talk or [someone] that talks a lot and has a lot to say?
- To those who are interested in real estate or those who are interested in the Real Estate Club, but may have not gotten into it yet, what would your message to them be?
Mitchell: My roommate, a good friend of mine, very driven individual, got into real estate this year, and he’s a senior. He actually just added the real estate major last summer. He asked me, “What do you think I should do to really stand out in real estate, how do I make the most of the program?” I told him to take advantage of every opportunity. He’s almost done with his requirements, never had a real estate internship, but he’s getting into it now. So it’s not too late, and what you should do if you’re interested in real estate is look at every opportunity as something that can help you achieve the next step. And if the next step is not pursuing real estate, that’s fine. If you are somewhat interested in real estate, it would be worthwhile to check out one of our meetings, go to a networking event, go take a class within real estate, take another class. Those are the things that are not only going to help you recruit within real estate, but determine whether it’s the right industry for you or not. Our meetings are a great way to do that for minimal cost because it’s not like you have to invest a whole semester. You just come to a meeting and you can see different aspects that may intrigue you.
Will: I think realistically, if you’re in another major, you’ve never taken anything around real estate, the best thing you can do as a student is come to Real Estate Club meetings. I probably learned more from my first semester here, from coming to these meetings and asking questions to people that are older than me afterwards, than I did in my real estate classes. This year we implemented pre-meeting context slides, so even if you know nothing about real estate, one of the more senior members will explain some concepts to you so nothing is going over your head.