Ohio State speaker series connects students with real estate professionals

A speaker series launched by The Ohio State University’s Center for Real Estate connects students who are interested in real estate careers with industry professionals.

The Brutus Luminaries Series brings real estate professionals to the Columbus campus to share their expertise, under the leadership of Donald D. Sheets, the center’s executive director. The center is housed in the Fisher College of Business.

“Our strategic plan is creating programming, events and opportunities for students, alumni and industry professionals,” said Ally M. Irwin, senior program administrator with the Center for Real Estate. “A lot of what we do is through an interdisciplinary lens.”

The series is designed to bring the Ohio State community together with industry leaders to address current trends, in keeping with the center’s mission, Irwin said.

“What’s driving us as the Center for Real Estate is to produce timely, relevant and unique topics for all of our stakeholders,” she said. “We really do take this multidisciplinary, multigenerational approach to what real estate is – or more broadly, what the built environment is.”

The Fisher Real Estate Society, a student organization that promotes careers in real estate, partnered with the center to plan the most recent Brutus Luminaries Series event on Feb. 5, said Daniel Lyner, the organization’s president.

“We bring in industry professionals to present to the members to give them perspective a little bit beyond what we get in the classroom, focusing on some of the fundamentals,” said Lyner, who’s majoring in real estate and urban analysis.

“This year we tried to [go] beyond just bringing in weekly speakers to also doing these educational events and workshops and teaching students about some concepts that come up during interview processes and things that are generally good to know to stand out in recruiting processes.”

Lyner and Sheets served as co-moderators for the Feb. 5 event, “Cornering Capital,” in which industry professionals discussed raising capital for new and existing projects. The panel also included Bryan Falk, managing partner, Vorys; Jay Morgan, partner, StepStone Group; Lou Prabell, corporate commercial credit manager, Park National Bank; and Doug Lyons, managing principal, Pearlmark.

The event offered students an opportunity to get an insider’s view of the business from professionals with years of experience, Lyner said.

“Being in the audience also enables you to connect with everyone on the panel because typically all these events are followed by one- to two-hour networking, which often stretches pretty far because these professionals are excited to talk to students and excited to help,” he said. “It’s an incredible opportunity to talk to CEOs and executives.”

More Brutus Luminaries Series are in the works, Irwin said. The next event is set for March 19 and will focus on the topic “Pathfinding: Nonlinear approaches to careers in real estate.” The series aims to help students apply what they learn, Irwin said.  

“They learn a lot in the classroom. They learn a lot in their student organizations, but there’s kind of a bridge that needs to happen – some bridge building between academia and industry,” she said. “And I think that that’s what we strive to do through the Brutus Luminaries Series.”

For more information, visit the Center for Real Estate’s website.