Emily Hanna had two starts to her real estate career: first as a 10-year-old collecting rent with her grandfather, then as an academic getting hired by an up-and-coming real estate investment trust.
Back when she was a child, Hanna took part in the family business, going from site to site with her maternal grandfather and getting her cheeks pinched in an early form of today's so-called tenant engagement.
"I was working for nothing," said Hanna with a laugh. Today Hanna is managing partner of investments at Crown Realty Partners, a Toronto-based real estate investor and manager of office properties in Canada that has grown to 3 billion Canadian dollars in assets and 140 employees since its inception in 2001.
Hanna first learned about cash flow and the grittier side of property management while helping her grandfather manage a tidy collection of real estate properties that started with the family's small fruit shop.
"I thought he was cool, and he let me do all sorts of things. He let me play with hammers, saws, electric wires."
Hanna thrived in school, and she would eventually obtain a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto.
"I was a nerd. I liked to study, went to summer school and had twice the credits you needed to graduate," she said.
After graduating in 2007, Hanna started interviewing with management consulting companies but got hired by Michael Emory, the chief executive of a small REIT at the time called Allied Properties that went public in 2003 and has since grown to a portfolio of more than 200 properties.
"The position was very vague," recalls Hanna, who realized when she was looking at consulting jobs that her real passion involved the underlying real estate.
"I got immersed intensely in everything. On my first day [at Allied REIT], we met institutional investors. We created my own custom rotation where I worked on financial reporting with the CFO. I worked with leasing. I went to buy buildings. It was a very flat organization at the time. I gobbled up anything I got exposed to. It was awesome."
As she thinks back to collecting rent with her grandfather and about her time at Allied REIT, she knows she learned valuable lessons from both experiences.
"Relationships matter so much. Begrudgingly going to meet the tenants" with her grandfather was engaging and built rapport, which is "such a big part of the business, unbeknownst to me at the time," said Hanna.
Hanna's nearly five years at Allied REIT taught her to be a jack of all trades, which is her true love. "I enjoy sticking my nose in everything."
She joined Crown Realty in 2012 as a vice president and was promoted to partner a year later, according to her LinkedIn profile.
"Part of my reason for my shift to Crown was that as [Allied REIT] began to grow, I had to be siloed," Hanna said. "And nobody puts baby in a corner. I want to be part of everything."
Hanna was promoted to managing partner of investments at Crown Realty at the beginning of 2022 and oversees capital raising and environmental, social and corporate governance functions. And she knows it's important to let people on her team grow.
"It's not that principle of growing to the level of your incompetence. Let's turn it to [the] converse and grow beyond what anyone thought possible," Hanna said.
R É S U M É
Emily Hanna | Managing partner of investments, Crown Realty Partners
Hometown: Toronto
Current city: Toronto
Years in industry: 20
Education: Bachelor's in math, zoology and economics, master's and Ph.D. in economics from University of Toronto
Hobbies: Health and wellness, gluten-free cooking, travelling, ballroom dancing, schlepping my son to his extra-curricular activities.
Advice to those starting out in the industry: "Don’t underestimate the counterintuitive."
Everyone in commercial real estate had to start somewhere. First Job explores where careers began.