Guest Speakers Bring Cases to Life

Professor William Goetzmann has continued working with several Yale SOM MBA and MBA for Executive students and case writers Jaan Elias and Jean Rosenthal since last year to develop additional case studies on commercial real estate to use in his course this fall, co-taught with Professor Jessica Helfand. The course’s title and theme this year is MGT 849 - Cases in Commercial Real Estate: Design, Development, and Innovation. Each of the case studies presented and produced by the students had a finance and design focus to tie into the theme of the course.

Many of the case studies come to fruition thanks to the connections that the students forge with critical people involved in each of the cases. These key people give access to highly useful information that really helps shape the case studies and these people give great insight into many different areas of the project. Often times, these key people also attend the class that the case is taught in to help further bring the case study to life by talking to the students, answering questions, and diving further into the project.

MBA for Executive student Kristina Whyte ‘18, worked on a new case titled, “Eastern Tower,” which is centered around a mixed-use tower in Philadephia’s Chinatown and was financed by green funds, grants, and loans. One of her main contacts who was involved in the project was Douglas Lawrence, Managing Principal at 5 Stone Green Capital, whose 100% green real estate investment firm was a major investor in the project. Douglas Lawrence visited Professors Goetzmann and Helfand’s class recently to talk about the case (see pictures below).

Douglas Lawrence 1

Douglas Lawrence 2

Douglas Lawrence 3

Many of the cases used in the course last year have been updated by the students and some of the brand new cases for this year’s course include:

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