Eve Picker Podcasts

Micaela Connery is co-founder and CEO of The Kelsey, a non-profit focused on inclusive housing for people with disabilities. Micaela’s lifelong advocacy grew out of her relationship with her late cousin and close friend, Kelsey Flynn O’Connor, who lived with multiple disabilities. As the two grew up together, Micaela saw firsthand the obstacles man…

Lyneir Richardson is building Black wealth through community-owned shopping centers. He is planning to buy 16 community shopping centers and invite 1,000 small investors to co-own them with his company, Chicago TREND. To accomplish this, Lyneir and his team have developed a rigorous set of criteria for finding and buying shopping centers in majorit…

“Being a developer without believing in architecture and its fundamental principles is like being religious without believing in God.” This is Philip Kafka’s take on architecture and real estate. I recently got to talk with him about his work and I think you will be as wowed as I am. Philip has taken a position on rebuilding Detroit that is inspira…

Greg Howes is the co-founder of CutMyTimber, a fabricator of timber and steel components for the entire building industry. Their projects are spread as far as Alaska, Québec, and Australia, with production based in Portland, OR, with an office in Vancouver, BC. They are able to make highly complex and efficient building systems available to both la…

Three years ago, I interviewed the delightful Jeremy McCleod of Breathe Architecture, and today I'm lucky enough to interview him again. Jeremy founded Breathe, an architecture studio in Melbourne, Australia. There he delivers gorgeous and sustainable buildings to his clients. But Jeremy was unhappy with the ever-widening gap between those who have…

Last summer we got to talk to Molly Meyer, a remarkable entrepreneur who wants to put a green roof within the reach of anyone who owns a building, big or small. Why, you ask? 80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how t…

Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman is an urban anthropologist. Want to know what that is? So did we! As an anthropologist, Katrina is curious about us – and why we behave the way we do in society and spaces. As an urbanist, she’s passionate about our cities – and how we can make them better for us, mentally and physically. So she applies anthropological pr…

Adam Gower is the founder of GowerCrowd. On his platform he shares his decades of experience in finance and development, showing developers how to raise money online for real estate crowdfunding deals. Content-rich, the platform has educational materials and training courses for both developers and investors alike. Adam also hosts a podcast show ca…

Sandra Lupien is passionate about the potential of mass timber. As Director of MassTimber at Michigan State University in Lansing, a program focused on outreach, research and education, she is working to advance mass timber construction and manufacturing in the state of Michigan. Sandra originally came to mass timber after exploring possible uses f…

It started with Tosha Wilson and her cousin wanting to open a laundromat with comfortable seating, fresh brewed coffee, a book room, and a yoga/meditation space. But they were turned down for every small business loan they applied for. In an interview, Tosha said, “Two professionals with decent jobs [and] good credit scores, and the bank basically …

Cedric Bobo is the co-founder of Project Destined, a non-profit that teaches minority teenagers the ins and outs of real estate investments. The name, Project Destined, was inspired by the 2016 film Destined, which tells the story of a young boy who in one reality is a drug dealer, and in the other, a successful architect. The outcome of a single e…

Adewale Agboola is an astounding photographer with many Fortune 500 clients. As a Black man he is in a minority in that profession. Only about 5% of professional photographers are Black. He is also a minority in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Only about 13% of the population in Portland is Black. But he and his partner, Cyrus Coleman, another su…

Jamison Manwaring is enjoying success as the co-founder and CEO of Neighborhood Ventures, an innovative Arizona-based real estate crowdfunding company, focused on value-add multi-family properties. It’s a real estate company for sure – they buy, hold and sell property. But the capital plan is innovative. Jamison went to business school and studied …

Meet Julie Bargmann, the inaugural recipient of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, described as the landscape architecture equivalent of the Pritzker Prize, so it's a really big deal! What makes this most exciting is the work that is being honored. In 1992, Julie founded D.I.R.T studio – Dump It Right There – i…

Elizabeth Timme is no snowflake. Strong and outspoken with degrees in architecture under her belt, she's building an alternative career on the strong beliefs she holds. That great design should be a right, not a privilege. A third generation architect born in Texas with childhood years spent in Italy and West Indies, Elizabeth has made roots in L.A…

Allison Arieff was lucky enough to help launch Dwell magazine, first as founding senior editor and then editor in chief. During her tenure, the Design and Architecture magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and by that point, it had already become a ubiquitous read for an emergent design community, rekindling a design life…

Helle Søholt was just 28 years old in 2000 when she co-founded Gehl Architects with Jan Gehl, her professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Together, they built a commanding firm, now over two decades old. Gehl focuses on people first in urban design with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space. In 2016, Hell…

Tracy Hadden Loh is biracial and has experienced inequity firsthand. Even as a young child, she knew something was wrong. Her career has been a purposeful exploration of how to fix things. These days Tracy is a Fellow with the Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro, a branch within the Brookings Institution. There, Tracy focuses o…

Rebecca Möller has managed very big construction projects for her entire career. In fact, she’s overseen more than 22 million square feet of commercial real estate worth over $10 billion in construction projects nationally. That’s a lot. But now she is tackling an even bigger problem – the housing crisis in California. Recognizing the need for a sc…

Early in his career, Jim Heid worked on humongous real estate projects all over the world as a management consultant. Over time, the diversity of places he lived and worked in shaped his appreciation of small, community-centric places with soul. He moved his head and heart from a loft in downtown San Francisco to the tiny 12,000-person town of Heal…

Brinda Devine wants to get back to basics. Early on in her real estate career, Brinda says she was often the only woman and/or Black person in the office, in meetings, at events, and even in classes. Today, she has over 25 years of experience in real estate, having worked as VP of Asset Management for Acquest Development, and as Wayne State Univers…

Madelyne Kirch is the founder of Sun & Moon Marketing Communications in New York. What differentiates her agency is its focus on real estate. Madelyne founded her company in her basement with a $2,500 investment. That was almost 30 years ago, and the need for Sun & Moon's expertise hasn't waned, in part because developers are not schooled in market…

David Kemper wanted to find a way to safeguard established renters against gentrification. His goal was to build a real-estate investment model that both stabilized existing rents and gave a voice to that community. The model he landed on, MINT (or Mixed-Income Neighborhood Trust), is a sophisticated and replicable ownership model. Each MINT develo…

Early in his career Paul Rabinovitch worked as a tree planter in the reforestation industry, personally planting over 800,000 trees in Canada, where he grew up. That set the stage for the career he pursued, first as the Executive Director at The Nature Conservancy, and then as a founder of Terracycle Investments, a socially-conscious real estate fi…

From an early age, Rico Quirindongo was interested in the impact of the built environment on people. That’s why he became an architect. But he sees an architect’s role as much larger than just designing buildings with a useful life. He believes every architect has an obligation, a responsibility to engage in a civic conversation for design justice …

Molly Meyer is democratizing the green roof. Why, you ask? 80% of the buildings that will exist in a few decades from now are already built. And since buildings are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, figuring out how to retrofit them economically, and easily, is a must do. Green roofs are a big part of that. Molly wants to put a gre…

Bryan Lee may have studied architecture, but he’s way more than an architect. He launched Colloqate Design to explore big, challenging and adamant ideas about equity in the built environment. At Colloqate, everything is on the table - sustainability, community history, immigration, transportation, food security and housing values. The end goal is a…

NuMarket was born out of the pandemic. Ross Chanowski founded the social crowdfunding platform in 2020 because he felt there wasn’t a way for communities to purposefully support the survival and growth of their local businesses. In an interview with The Boston Globe, Ross said that he wanted to develop a way for customers to meaningfully support th…

A year ago we talked with Kevin Cavenaugh. In case you missed that conversation we recommend you take a listen. Kevin is a rare developer. Left brain, right brain, head and heart all come to bear on his wildly creative buildings. He has carved out a special place for himself in the Portland real estate world. He has said, “I’m tired of mocha-colore…

Alex Lofton’s mom was a school teacher. That’s who he was thinking of when he founded Landed. Alex is on a mission to help essential professionals build financial security and buy homes in the communities they serve. By 'essential professionals' Alex means school teachers, like his mom, firefighters, police and healthcare professionals – all of tho…

Stephanie Blake is an historian at heart. That’s what she studied at Yale, much to her parents dismay. They didn’t understand how she could leverage history into a career. But she has. In a big way. Stephanie leads a company, Skylight Studios, that revels in reimagining enormously gorgeous and gritty vacant buildings. Millions of square feet of vac…

Majora Carter is truly a renaissance woman. Her career as urban revitalization strategist has spanned environment, economy, social mobility and real estate development, and her work has won major awards in each sector, including a MacArthur Genius grant. Majora's words are inscribed on the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History…

Pooja Agrawal, architect and planner, is co-founder of the social enterprise Public Practice, and now serves as its CEO. Based in London, Public Practice creates placements for trained architects and planners in local government. Their goal is to build up the capacity of planning departments to respond to both the crisis of affordable housing, and …

Adrian Washington says that until he was past 30 he had never even heard the term ‘real estate developer.’ Today he is known for over two decades of experience in urban real estate development, construction and management and the startup of several companies including the Neighborhood Development Company. 100% minority owned, NDC is a triple-bottom…

Jill Ferrari is all about creating impact where it is needed. An attorney with twenty-five years of real estate development and operations experience, she is also the co-founder of Renovare Development: a woman-owned, social impact, real estate development company focused on transformational projects in Michigan. To say Jill knows this space would …

Tracy Gabriel works at repairing urban environments. As president and executive director of the National Landing Business Improvement District in Northern Virginia, she puts her experience as an urbanist, planner and place-maker to work, daily, leading the ongoing makeover of the Crystal City with over $8B in private investment in the pipeline. Des…

Scottie Smith fell in love with real estate at just 19. By the time he was 21, he had invested in multiple properties and had numerous tenants. In 2011, Scottie founded SSA, a real estate brokerage, with just one other agent, and it has doubled in size, year over year, making SSA one of the fastest growing independent real estate brokerages in Texa…

Tom De Simone is totally into community finance. He runs an $80 million community loan fund called Genesis LA. It’s a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), which looks and feels like a bank (because they make loans), but with special 'super powers' reserved for triple bottom line projects and customers. CDFIs emerged in the 1990s, spe…

John Green is working on a very big idea. With well over a decade of experience in real estate and finance, John has co-founded Blackstar Stability, a program that uses a double-bottom line business model to create compelling risk-adjusted returns for investors, while generating significant benefits for low-income and middle-income families and com…

Harri Holopainen has a mission - to define Next Generation Recycling. A bit of a technology ‘man for all seasons’, Harri started his career in computer graphics on a Commodore 64. He worked on smart card payment systems, co-founded a small graphics software company, and even designed and implemented a prototype online gaming world, a subject he did…

John Liss is running on fumes. He’s up very early, every morning, building his company FAST. And he’s doing something important and having fun. John has always been fascinated by the real estate industry. But more often than not, John says, people do not realize the true value of their real estate asset because the industry is ... a little sloppy. …

Travis Lee is a developer who fully believes in the local economy. After launching a career 'building big,' Travis came home to Dorchester, a vibrant and diverse community in Boston. Taking his role as a developer in the neighborhood seriously, Travis has worked closely with community groups and civic associations to conceive, plan, permit and cons…

A year ago we talked with Avra Jain, an innovative developer based in the city of Miami. With a career path that had taken her from bond trading on Wall Street to developing properties along some of Miami's trendiest streets, Avra earned a reputation for identifying the next it neighborhood. While she works on very large scale projects, her passion…

Saki Bailey, Executive Director of San Francisco Community Land Trust, is an expert in community land trusts, co-operatives and limited equity housing cooperatives. Plus, she has authored books on property law, community land trusts, and the commons. In this podcast she breaks down how community land trusts emerged, how they have morphed from land …

In early 2020, we talked to a remarkable architect, based in Melbourne, who has embraced an ethos of “affordable and sustainable simultaneously." The result? Spectacular urban apartments, inexpensive to live in, with a waiting list of over 8,000 people. Jeremy McLeod is the founding director of Breathe Architecture, a world class architecture firm …

Joe Minicozzi has been recognized as one of the '100 Most Influential Urbanists' of all time. Although he trained as an architect and urban designer, the above honor was not bestowed for designing buildings or spaces. Joe’s influence comes through data. Joe's organization, Urban3, helps communities understand the economic impact of development – tr…

Jonathan Cohen has made his mark. Though he started his professional life as an environmental engineer, Jonathan's true persona as a restless entrepreneur emerged when he tackled the remake of an historic building in Portland’s Chinatown district. This project, in a building vacant for almost four decades, might have frightened most people, but Jon…

We're going to point you back to one of our golden oldies today because it's been an insanely popular podcast. If you missed it, here's another chance to listen. Sam Ruben is passionate with a capital P, about sustainability. Sustainability is not just a moral principle for Sam. He believes that as a core value, it can improve the bottom line and i…

Mott Smith is not a big box developer, at least not the big box that might spring to mind. His company, Amped Kitchens, rebuilds vacant warehouses into turnkey food production spaces. Think of it as an apartment building for commercial food producers, says Mott. This might sound straightforward to you, but it took two years working with the L.A. Co…

DC is a city where rents are running rampant and this only promises to get worse once Amazon’s HQ2 fully opens. For Kimberly Driggins, this is a challenge worth taking on. She has had a remarkable career in urban planning and public policy, working on and in the cities she loves. And now she is turning her passion and energy to the challenging cris…