Real Estate: The Chosen Path

Thomas Shanabruch’00 shared about his career path to become the Vice President of Investments for CRG, a real estate firm located in Chicago. 

My career pathway is pretty much a winding path. I started as a Financial Analyst in the retail industry with Borders, then slowly got involved in some aspects of the real estate industry within the same company.

At that time, I decided to further my knowledge, so I went to the University of Michigan for my MBA degree. When I was halfway through my MBA degree, I got an offer asking me to join a real estate firm, McKinley, even though I did not know much about real estate operations and investment.

However, I knew that I would like to work for a small firm rather than a big corporation, so I decided to take my chance. I took the jobs with little industry-related working experience. However, over many steps and years, I finally caught up with and contributed to the company’s growth (I was with the team to grow the company from 750 to approximately 15,000 employees before leaving).

After working with that company for 5 years, I moved to a different company in the real estate industry, McCaffery Interests. I worked as the Senior Managing Director of Investments there.

Currently, I am the Vice President of Investments for CRG, another real estate firm located in Chicago. To sum up, my career path is like, in my 20s and early 30s, I tried to find the career path that fits me the most, and now, in my 40s, I continue with the chosen one.

My role focuses on capitalizing on multifamily development and acquisition opportunities. My work involves overseeing all parts of the company investments, from planning, underwriting new opportunities, acquiring value-add properties to structuring equity investments in joint-venture development projects.

By: Anh H Nguyen'22, Dung Pham'22
November 29, 2021

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