She was an accountant in telecommunications when Jaime McKenna was drawn to real estate by the chance to get into the specific details of properties. Even if it involves bed bugs.

The managing director and group head of real estate of Toronto-based Fengate Asset Management, which has completed 75 real estate projects valued at more than 10 billion Canadian dollars, left Bell Canada in 2008. She took a job in finance and accounting at Minto Development, a provider of condos, apartment rentals, furnished suites and commercial space.

The accounting world of real estate includes "the minutiae of everything," said McKenna. "I was talking about everything from the cost of bed bug removal to putting out winter mats," she said about her time at Minto. "You get to know the intricacies of the people and the buildings. You build up from there and get to a higher and higher level" of knowledge.

Even though Bell Canada, one of Canada's largest communications providers, was a great employer where McKenna was promoted and excelled, she wanted to work somewhere where she could see the business grow, evolve and where she could have a direct effect.

"Minto was the kind of size where I could talk to the chief executive and all levels of the organization, visit the assets. It just felt like a place where my voice could be heard," said McKenna, who had already moved to Canada's capital for Bell, making the switch to Ottawa-based Minto an easier transition.

Her first days at Minto coincided with the financial crisis of 2008, and McKenna admits she was naive about the effect on the real estate industry. One of her first meetings included family-run Minto's owners.

"At Bell Canada, I never got near the CEO," McKenna said. Then at Minto, "three days in, I'm sitting with the owners, the heads of divisions and experiencing the entire family dynamic where they are comfortable debating the issues," McKenna said. "From a cultural perspective, it was overwhelming but in a positive way."

At Minto, she was part of the executive team that led the initial public offering of Minto Apartment REIT and she served as chief investment officer of the real estate investment trust.

"One of the great things about accounting is you understand your technical profession," said McKenna, noting it made switching industries easier. "I still needed to understand the underlying business. But once I got into real estate, I got addicted pretty quickly. It's been 15 years now. Real estate is just something that once you get in, you never leave."

McKenna joined Fengate in 2019 and oversees the company's real estate portfolio of multifamily, industrial, office, hospitality, and long-term care properties across Ontario. Fengate's real estate division has about 70 employees and its parent company also focuses on infrastructure and private equity assets in Canada and the United States.

The lure of real estate is it's a tangible industry, she said: "We have all lived in apartments. We have all worked in office buildings. It's so close to home," as opposed to working in telecom and technology, which "can be daunting," she added.

McKenna said those early experiences taught her it's all about the people.

At Minto, McKenna recalled sometimes learning more in chats during a meeting break than she did at other points of the day.

"Only way I could understand how to run the accounting books and how to add value to the business was to understand the people. Those people could be the tenants, the front-line property managers, the back-office accountants, the CEO," said McKenna.

She likes working at Fengate because she is still exposed to other aspects of the larger business.

"You want to understand the people around you, and that's how you drive them. When I joined Fengate, I knew the two critical things were getting the right team in place and getting that team engaged, so they want to drive forward with the same vision."

Her advice for anybody starting in the industry is to listen and absorb as much as possible from colleagues. "Understand what they are saying technically but also understand the person themselves. I also tell people to get out and see the assets. Google maps can sometimes make things look really good, and then you get out to it, and it's a farmer's field."

Everyone in commercial real estate had to start somewhere. CoStar's First Job column explores where careers began.