Karen Weaver learned in her first job in commercial real estate that patience is a powerful tool. And that's not just for your career, it also applies to how you look at assets.

Weaver, who stepped down as chief executive and president of MCAN Financial Group this month after holding the top job for almost five years, was working at the professional services firm KPMG in Seattle in 1993. She then went to work for a real estate lender that was a client of the company, ultimately owned by Royal Trust Corp. of Canada, and learned the art of being able to bide your time.

"I remember this residential tower (in Toronto) where the value of it swung from minimal to minus to plus," said Weaver. "You have a good asset in a bad market, and it needs work. That's where you make money. You have to be patient."

Since she moved to Canada from Seattle she has been all about patience and learning from some of the biggest names in the industry north of the border. Originally from Virginia, her career history in Canada includes some of the country's most prominent commercial real estate companies, including Brookfield Properties.

Before landing at MCAN Financial, she eventually rose to chief financial officer at one of Canada's largest retail landlords, First Capital REIT. MCAN has a nearly 14% ownership in MCAP, Canada's largest independent mortgage finance company, She was part of a team that expanded the Toronto-based retail landlord from CA$1.6 billion in assets to CA$8.4 billion during her 10.5-year stay there.

It was during a three-month work assignment she took with Royal Trust in Toronto that "I got exposure to real estate and how you turn around real estate. When you are in real estate lending and have a troubled asset, you learn a lot about the asset class and the asset itself to work out," she said.

Royal Trust was eventually split in two, half bought by Royal Bank of Canada in 1993 for CA$1.3 billion, with assets the bank did not want going into a company known as Gentra Inc., part of the Brascan Corp., which would later become Brookfield Asset Management.

Weaver would become chief financial officer of Gentra before taking on the same job at Brookfield Properties in 1997.

"We were aligning and optimizing the assets of the Canadian group under Brookfield [Asset]," said Weaver. "We bought Fifth Avenue Place in Calgary from the bondholders, we bought the Exchange Tower" in Toronto from the bondholders in 1994 for $132 per square foot, she added.

Brookfield has exploded since she left almost 20 years ago to a company with about US$825 billion under management, but Weaver was exposed to some of the greatest real estate minds in the industry in those early days.

She recalls meeting the current Brookfield Asset Management CEO, when "Bruce Flatt walked into my office, and I was, like, who is this young man."

She landed at First Capital REIT as CFO in 2004 when then CEO Dori Segal approached her to work for him. Her work at Brookfield gave her retail sector knowledge and allowed her to take the next leap in her career. The experience with Gentra exposed her to everything from retail to office refurbishment.

"Dori understood retail, and when Dori came knocking at my door with his vision, I knew he was credible," said Weaver.

She jumped to Canadian global payments and lending technology provider D+H in 2014, which was eventually purchased by American private equity firm Vista Equity Partners in 2017 and merged with British software provider Misys and rebranded as Finastra.

At the end of the day, she also learned that property truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

"It is amazing how you can think about a piece of real estate," said Weaver. "And what I learned from Dori and Brookfield was you learn by seeing and doing and having boots on the ground. We would take long drives around our real estate at night to see what it looked like to consumers. Even today, I will be looking at some sites and thinking what it will look like one day. What could you do?"

Weaver remains humble about traversing a real estate world where few women, even today, have cracked the C-suite, let alone reached CEO.

"I've always been a hard worker, and I'm not saying others are not. But I like to get things done, and I'm good at organizing and connecting dots. A demeanor like mine, whether male or female and a lot of focus and encouragement for others to do their best is what makes a good leader. Male or female."