Samantha Rudin Earls, who in January became co-CEO of Rudin alongside her brother, Michael Rudin, in some way finally feels at home at the business her great-grandfather, Samuel Rudin, founded in 1925.
When she started her real estate journey in the family business back in 2007, Rudin Earls, surrounded mostly by men, said she felt isolated at times.
“I no longer feel alone,” Rudin’s first female CEO told a crowd of about 150 people, mostly women, at a lunch event last week hosted by Commercial Real Estate Women, or CREW, New York.
Rudin, one of New York’s largest family-run private real estate owners, “has been willing to do things that are different. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have the support. … I see the landscape continue to change and evolve and watch how women continue to rise up. … It’s a pivotal time for women," she said.
The issue of a lack of women in corporate leadership of commercial real estate firms has been a increasing subject of discussion in the industry as surveys continue to show low percentages of female participation compared to men. Rudin now has about 35% of women in company leadership roles, she said in an interview.
“That continues to get changed,” Rudin Earls told CoStar News. “That's a big transformation over the last decade. … We are hiring people, not just because they're women. We're hiring people that are right for the role, and they happen to also be women.”
Started as an Assistant
Rudin Earls, who started at the family business sitting behind an assistant’s desk at the chief operating officer’s office to be exposed and learn the ropes, credits where she is today not just from the support of her brother and family, but also from mentors such as Mary Ann Tighe, chief executive of CBRE’s New York tri-state region since 2002.
“As a woman in this industry … to have someone who believes in you, whatever gender, it is invaluable,” Rudin Earls said during the lunch panel. “It will never get old when people show up for each other.”
Tighe became her mentor starting in 2008, Rudin Earls told CoStar News.
“She's put me in situations that I wouldn't have necessarily been in if I didn't have her opening a door,” she added.
Today, as a leader herself, Rudin Earls empowers and sends a message in her own way. That includes having her office decked out in pink for the past 10 years.
“Making my office pink was a statement,” Rudin Earls, donning a pink dress, told the lunch crowd, adding that someone once described her office as a Barbie Dreamhouse look-alike. “You can think that, but it was a little bit more subversive to … choose the color pink for my office."
After the event, she told CoStar News: “I just thought I wanted my office to feel happy and bright. It’s very popular now [with the idea that] we want people to come to the office. For me, it makes me happy to have it in pink. It's really a matter of people feeling connected to their space whatever it may be. What's important is we want people collaborating, coming to the office, enjoying their work.”