Faculty & Staff
Faculty Associated with the MIT Center for Real Estate
- Brian (Tony) Ciochetti, Thomas G. Eastman Chair; Chairman and Director, MIT Center for Real Estate; Professor of the Practice of Real Estate, Department of Urban Studies and Planning
- Lynn Fisher, Associate Professor of Real Estate
- Dennis Frenchman, Professor, Department of Urban Studies and Planning
- David Geltner, Director of Research, MIT Center for Real Estate; Professor of Real Estate
- Christopher Gordon, Chief Operating Officer for the Allston Development Group at Harvard University
- John Kennedy, Partner, Kennedy Ventures LLC.
- John Macomber, President, BuildingVision, Inc.
- Tod McGrath, Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning
- Jamie Pennington, Project Manager at Criterion Development Partners
- Peter Roth, Lecturer
- Gloria Schuck, Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning
- Yanni Tsipis, Senior Vice President and Partner, Meredith & Grew
- William C. Wheaton, Professor of Economics
Staff
- Jennifer Boyles, Academic Senior Staff Assistant
- Brian (Tony) Ciochetti, Thomas G. Eastman Chair; Chairman
- Marion O. Cunningham, Managing Director
- David Geltner, Director
- Cheryl Gillespie, Financial Administrator
- Julian Phillippi, Executive Education and Professional Development Coordinator
- Najat Kessler, Executive Assistant to the Chairman; Industry Liaison
- Charles H. "Hank" Spaulding, Honorary Chairholder
- Maria Vieira, Associate Director for Education
Research Support
- Sheharyah (Schery) Bokhari, Research Support Associate, Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
- Allison Curreri, Research Assistant, Housing Affordability Initiative
- Maurice Dalton, Research Assistant, Housing Affordability Initiative
- Omari A. Davis, Research Assistant, Housing Affordability Initiative
- Holly Horrigan, Research Support Associate, Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
- David Hutching, Research Assistant, Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
- Henry Pollakowski, Principal Research Associate, MIT Center for Real Estate; Housing Economist
- Amy Sargent, Administrative Assistant
Brian (Tony) Ciochetti
Thomas G. Eastman Chair
Chairman and Director, Center for Real Estate
Professor of the Practice of Real Estate, Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Office: MIT Center for Real Estate, Bldg. W31-310
tel: 617-253-3988, fax: 617-964-2822, email: tc@mit.edu
Tony Ciochetti is the Thomas G. Eastman Chair and Chairman and Director of the MIT Center for Real Estate. His primary responsibilities at MIT are to enhance the Center’s mission of improving the global built environment through industry relevant research and to promote more informed professional practice. He is also involved in teaching topics in real estate finance and development. Prior to his appointment at MIT, Dr. Ciochetti was the Director of the Center for Real Estate Development and a Professor of Finance at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr. Ciochetti is also a visiting Professor in the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge University in England. Professor Ciochetti’s teaching areas of expertise include Commercial Real Estate Development and Real Estate Finance. He has created or taught courses in these areas at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Dr. Ciochetti also teaches executive courses on such topics as real estate development, portfolio and asset management, and asset securitization for both industry and academic organizations.
Dr. Ciochetti’s research interests lie in two broad areas: commercial mortgage credit risk and the role of real estate within pension plan portfolios. His work has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and the Journal of Real Estate Research. Tony is currently the President of the Real Estate Research Institute, where he is also an academic fellow, and serves on the Board of Directors of Real Estate Economics. He also serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Real Estate Finance and CMBS World. He regularly consults on behalf of investment banks, rating agencies, institutional clients and development companies. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Ciochetti spent 12 years in the private sector in the areas of commercial real estate development and consulting.
Dr. Ciochetti received his B.A. in Finance from the University of Oregon, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Real Estate and Urban Land Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lynn Fisher
Associate Professor of Real Estate
Department of Urban Studies & Planning
Office: MIT Center for Real Estate, Bldg. W31-310
tel: 617-252-1685, fax: 617-258-6991, email: lfisher@mit.edu
Professor Lynn M. Fisher is an Associate Professor of Real Estate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and at the Center for Real Estate at MIT. She currently holds the Ford Development Chair and is Director of the MIT/CRE Housing Affordability Initiative. She received her Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Smeal School of Business at Pennsylvania State University in 2002 where she concentrated in real estate finance and microeconomics. Her academic research has been examining the influence of laws and legal institutions on the efficiency of contracts and bargaining outcomes in real estate markets. Recently, she has employed both bargaining theory and empirical evidence in exploring the relationship between local government regulators and private-sector developers in the context of land-use regulations. In other on-going research on residential real estate markets, she is investigating the history of the laws, norms and rules governing the right to prepay residential mortgages in the U.S., mortgage contracting variation across legal systems, and the impact of homeownership on labor markets. With colleagues at the MIT/CRE Housing Affordability Initiative, she has also spent the last several years working to produce an economically meaningful measure of affordable housing for regional policy makers. Her teaching portfolio at MIT includes graduate courses on housing markets, real estate development, and the legal issues in development.
Download Professor Fisher's Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 22K)
Dennis Frenchman
Professor, Department of Urban Studies & Planning and Department of Architecture
Office: MIT, Department of Urban Studies and Planning,
Bldg. 10-485
tel: 617-253-8847, fax: 617-253-2654, email: dennisf@mit.edu
Dennis Frenchman is a Professor at MIT with a joint appointment in the Departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), where he heads the City Design and Development Group. He teaches the core course in Design for Development at the Center for Real Estate, as well as other courses in design of the urban environment.
Mr. Frenchman is also a registered architect and founding principal of ICON Architecture, Inc. an architecture, urban design, and planning firm with offices in Boston and a nationwide practice. He has directed numerous urban design projects for public agencies and private development interests in the areas of downtown revitalization, public housing modernization, commercial development, and historic preservation. He has been the architect for several mixed-use urban projects including the City Fair marketplace in Charlotte, NC. Recent professional work includes the Plan for the Allegheny Ridge, the Plan for the Lackawanna Valley; the Atlantic City Corridor Development Plan; and the Fore River Shipyard Redevelopment Plan.
Prior to returning to the Boston area, Mr. Frenchman was the principal architect for the New Jersey Division of Housing and Urban Renewal. He earned his MCP and MArch degrees from MIT and has been a lecturer at Harvard University.
David Geltner
Director of Research, Center for Real Estate
George Macomber Professor
and Professor of Real Estate Finance in the
Department of Urban Studies & Planning
Office: MIT Center for Real Estate, Bldg. W31-310
tel: 617-253-5131, fax: 617-258-6991, email: dgeltner@mit.edu
David Geltner is the Director of Research for the MIT Center for Real Estate, as well as the George Macomber Professor and Professor of Real Estate Finance in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning (DUSP). As Director, Dr. Geltner shares responsibility for the overall planning and management of the Center, and heads MIT’s Master of Science in Real Estate Development (MSRED) program.
Formerly the REEAC Professor of Real Estate in the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Geltner has been teaching graduate level real estate investments and finance since 1989. His current research focuses on real estate investment performance measurement and the related areas of asset valuation and private
asset market functioning.
Dr Geltner has served since 1999 as the External Academic Member of the Real Estate Investment Committee of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (a pension plan sponsor with over $6 billion of directly managed real estate holdings). He also serves as the Academic Advisor to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), and serves on the advisory board of Perennial Capital Advisors LLC.
Dr Geltner received his Ph.D. in 1989 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Civil Engineering Department in the field of infrastructure finance and economics. He also has degrees in urban studies from Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Michigan. Dr Geltner served a research appointment from 1998-2004 as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Land Management of the Faculty of Urban and Regional Science at the University of Reading (England). Dr Geltner is an Academic Fellow of the Urban Land Institute (2004-2007), a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute, and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
From 1994-99, Dr. Geltner was a Managing Editor of Real Estate Finance, and from 2000-2003 he was a co-editor of Real Estate Economics (the leading academic real estate journal and the official journal of the American Real Estate & Urban Economics Association). Dr Geltner also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and the Journal of Property Research. From 1994-2000, he served on the Advisory Board and Board of Directors of the Real Estate Research Institute, where he is now a RERI Fellow.
Dr Geltner has published extensively in leading academic journals in the area of real estate economics, investment analysis, and performance measurement. Dr Geltner is co-author of Commercial Real Estate Analysis & Investments, a new graduate-level real estate investments textbook published by South-Western College Publishing Company.
Download Professor Geltner's Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 33K)
Christopher Gordon
Chief Operating Officer for the Allston Development Group
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
email: chris_gordon@harvard.edu
Mr. Gordon is the Chief Operating Officer for the Allston Development Group at Harvard University. In that role he oversees all aspect of development of Harvard’s proposed campus expansion in the Allston section of Boston, directly connected to the historic Cambridge campus. The new, multi-billion dollar development will encompass over three hundred acres along the Charles River and include state of the art academic, cultural, housing, athletic, and commercial facilities. Mr. Gordon is also a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaching a graduate course on alternative project delivery methods and has authored several articles on the subject.
Gordon has a bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Maine and a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (research focus on project management and infrastructure delivery methods) and is a registered Professional Engineer in several states.
Download Christopher Gordon's Bio (pdf, 78K)
John Kennedy
Partner
Kennedy Ventures, LLC
email: jkennedy@mit.edu
John Kennedy has been a Lecturer at MIT since 1994, currently at the Center for Real Estate and previously at the Center for Construction Research and Engineering. At MIT he has taught Entrepreneurship and Strategic Planning for the Design, Build, and Real Estate Development segments of the built environment.
As Principal Partner of Kennedy Ventures LLC, a venture company, John works with companies within the built environment to unlock latent business or real estate development opportunities. Previously, John was the founder and President of Kennedy & Rossi. Inc., a design build firm, as well as other businesses within the built environment. Upon the company’s merger with Houston-based Linbeck Corp., he became the new firm’s Executive Vice President.
John holds a M.S. from MIT and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Merrimack College.
John Macomber
President
BuildingVision, Inc. Boston, MA
email: jdmacomber@buildingvision.net
In industry, John is the President of BuildingVision, Inc. an consulting and angel investment firm. He is a nationally recognized thought leader on information technology and industry change in construction and real estate. He has been teaching the "E-Commerce and the Internet in Real Estate and Construction" course and its predecessors at MIT since 1988.
John holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Dartmouth College.
W. Tod McGrath
advisoRE, LLC, Boston, MA
tel: 617-283-2338, fax: 781-749-4886
email: wtod@advisore.com
Tod McGrath is a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). He is also the President of advisoRE, LLC which assists clients with real estate strategy, analytics, and negotiation. At MIT, he has taught an introductory finance course in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and the core course in real estate finance at the Center for Real Estate, as well as professional development courses in basic and advanced finance and spreadsheet analysis.
Mr. McGrath has written a number of papers on real estate finance. He won Shidler awards in 1987 and 1988 for the best real estate writing by a graduate student nationwide.
Previously, Mr. McGrath was Sr. Vice President at McCall & Almy, Inc. in Boston, where he helped formulate and implement real estate acquisition/disposition strategies for corporate clients. Prior to that, he was at Winthrop Financial Associates where he had primary responsibility for stock selection and portfolio strategies for the Pioneer Winthrop Real Estate Investment Fund.
Mr. McGrath is a graduate of Columbia College and received his M.B.A from the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University
Jamie Pennington
Criterion Development
email: jpennington@criteriondp.com
Jamie Pennington is a Project Manager at Criterion Development Partners in Waltham, MA. Jamie is a graduate of the MSRED program, class of 2002.
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Peter Roth
Lecturer
Lecturer, Department of Architecture
Office: MIT Center for Real Estate, Bldg. W31-310
tel: 617-253-4373, fax: 617-258-6991, email: peterroth@newatlantic.net
Peter Roth is a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture. He is also a developer and real estate consultant with national experience in the area of adaptive reuse and economic development. His consulting work focuses on developing sustainable and diverse economic and real estate development strategies for large complex industrial and waterfront sites.
Mr. Roth founded the New Atlantic Development Corporation, a Boston-based development company focused on adaptive re-use, historic preservation, affordable housing, and community economic development. His work particularly emphasizes service-enriched housing for special needs populations.
Mr. Roth earned Masters degrees in both Architecture and Real Estate Development from MIT. He was a member of the first graduating class of MIT's Center for Real Estate.
Gloria Schuck
Lecturer, MIT Department of Urban Studies
and Planning
Office: Bldg. W31-310
fax: 617-244-2519, email: gschuck@mit.edu
Gloria Schuck is a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). For seventeen years she has designed, developed and taught graduate management and leadership courses at the MIT Center for Real Estate, including “Leadership in Real Estate.” While teaching this course, she has supervised student research that has led to the development of more than seventy-five real estate management/organization case studies. Dr. Schuck also served for two years as the Center's Director of Education.
Prior to her involvement with the Center, Dr. Schuck conducted research at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research and was a lecturer at the Sloan School of Management. Before coming to MIT, Dr. Schuck was a research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. The Harvard Business School case studies that she wrote are considered landmarks in the field of organizations and information technology.
In her consulting work to a wide range of companies in the financial, manufacturing, telecommunications, and retail industries, Dr. Schuck coaches executives to improve their performance and the performance of those reporting to them. She works with
executives and executive teams on leadership, management style, and organizational change and implementation. She has also consulted with public sector organizations and utility companies to redefine the regulatory relationship. Gloria's research and consulting on organizational change has taken her to twenty countries.
Dr. Schuck received a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Northern Iowa as well as a master's and a doctorate degree from Harvard University.
Download Professor Schuck's Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 22K)
Yanni Tsipis
Senior Vice President and Partner, Development Group
Meredith & Grew
tel: 617-330-8151, fax: 617-330-8093, email: ytsipis@mit.edu
Yanni specializes in the permitting and development of large-scale urban projects. His recently completed projects include the 61-unit Grandview Condominiums in downtown Boston, the 361-unit Nashua Street Residences at North Station, and the Promenade, a 220-unit historic rehabilitation project in downtown Providence.
Yanni is active in a number of civic activities in Boston and is a member of the Boston Landmarks Commission. He serves on the Board of Overseers of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Board of Directors of Preservation Massachusetts, WalkBoston, the Bostonian Society, and the Boston Society of Civil Engineers. A Boston native and resident, Yanni holds degrees in Urban Studies and Planning and Civil Engineering from MIT and is the author of several books about the history of Boston's transportation infrastructure.
William C. Wheaton
Professor, MIT Department of Economics
Director of Research, Center for Real Estate
Office: Bldg. E52-252B
tel: 617-253-1723, fax: 617-258-6991, email: wheaton@mit.edu
William Wheaton is a Professor holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Economics and Urban Studies and Planning. An authority on regional economics, Bill is a principal in a consulting firm that provides market analyses for development companies active in the market for commercial space.
A member of the MIT faculty since 1972, Professor Wheaton helped to develop the field of urban economics by pioneering the theory of how land, location, and housing markets jointly operate. He also specializes in the problems of urban infrastructure and local government finance. He has written numerous articles in scholarly journals throughout the world, and is a co-author of Urban Economics and Real Estate Markets, the first text book to cover both real estate applications and economics.
In the last few years, Professor Wheaton has been actively applying economic research to the real estate industry. He helped organize the MIT Center for Real Estate, and teaches the program's core course in Real Estate Economics. He was the first economist to apply econometric methods to the forecasting of real estate markets, and is a principal in Torto Wheaton Research, a globally-recognized real estate consulting firm that works with the real estate industry to better understand the fluctuations and trends of the market.
Professor Wheaton received a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years he has worked with many US governmental agencies, as well as the World Bank and the United Nations. Closer to home, he has been a member of the planning commissions in each of the several towns where he has lived.
Charles H. "Hank" Spaulding
Honorary Chairholder
Hank Spaulding is the founder and guiding spirit of the Center as well as the motivating force behind much of what we do. Hank is an alumnus of MIT and a member of the MIT Corporation, the group of 100 business leaders who guide the Institute. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1951, and subsequently founded Spaulding and Slye, a development company.
Marion O. Cunningham
Managing Director
Email: marionoc@mit.edu
As chief operating officer, Marion is a member of the senior management team at the Center and has overall responsibility for budgeting, financial operations, personnel, non-degree programs, administrative compliance with the Institute, and facilities. She also manages the career support program for graduate students and alumni relations, and shares responsibility for industrial relations. Before coming to MIT/CRE, Marion worked as a team leader in the commercial real estate lending department of The Bank of New York, where she had a ten-year career. Prior to that, she was an assistant project manager for The Rouse Company. She is a 1982 graduate of MIT's Master in City Planning program, and she earned an M.B.A. in Real Estate Finance at The Wharton School.
Download Marion Cunningham's Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 72K)
Maria Vieira
Associate Director for Education
Email: mvieira@mit.edu
Maria works closely with the Director on the administration of the MSRED program, and as "chief operations officer" for the Masters program handles all academic procedures. Maria coordinates the admission process and can answer questions regarding admission procedures, financial aid, class scheduling, registration, dropping and adding courses, etc. She serves as registration officer for MSRED students. Maria also assists with Alumni activities.
Cheryl Gillespie
Senior Financial Assistant
Email: cheryl@mit.edu
Cheryl provides financial and budgeting assistance to MIT/CRE staff, and maintains the Center's financial records. She also reviews, processes, and monitors accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll transactions. She received her Bachelor's Degree in Management from Northeastern University in 2006, and has served the MIT community since 1986.
Julian Phillippi
Executive Education and Professional Development Coordinator
Email: phillippi@mit.edu
Julian is no stranger to an academic environment having taught history for five years at a Boston high school. In addition, for the last two years she has been working as the Director of the Global Classrooms Project for the United Nations Association of Greater Boston, an organization charged with presenting programs, conferences, and curriculum based on the Model UN and Global Classrooms program. Julian is multi-lingual, speaking Arabic, French, and German. She is responsible for the Center’s professional development and executive education program domestically and around the world.
Najat Kessler
Executive Assistant to the Chairman; Industry Liaison
Email: najatk@mit.edu
Najat’s major duties are in support of the Center's Partnership Program and administrative support to the Chairman of the Center. She works with Center staff to coordinate the Partner’s meetings, maintains the Partners database, oversee membership records and keep track of the Center's industry relations.
Jennifer Boyles
Academic Senior Staff Assistant
Email: jboyles@mit.edu
Jennifer helps both the Director and the Associate Director for Education with student-related matters. She provides information to prospective applicants, organizes and distributes course material, provides audio-visual support for courses and Center functions, maintains various databases and web sites, and assists in coordinating the January IAP courses. She also assists with career support, alumni activities, and professional development courses.
Sheharyar Bokhari
Research Support Associate
Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
Email: sbokhari@mit.edu
Schery provides research assistance to David Geltner and Henry Pollakowsi in the development of the Commercial Real Estate Index Project and in the maintenance of CREDL. He received his M.A. in Economics from Tufts University in 2006. He is also a Doctoral student in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning at MIT.
Allison Curreri
Research Assistant
Housing Affordability Initiative
Email:
Allison is an undergraduate student majoring in Geography and Economics at Dartmouth College.
Maurice Dalton
Research Assistant
Housing Affordability Initiative
Email: mdalton@mit.edu
Maurice received his Master of Arts in Economics from Tufts University in 2008.
Omari A. Davis
Research Assistant
Housing Affordability Initiative
Email: omarid@mit.edu
Omari is currently a Master’s in City Planning student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.
Holly Horrigan
Research Support Associate
Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
Email: hthorr@mit.edu
Holly received her Bachelor of Science in Economics from MIT in 1988.
David Hutching
Research Assistant
Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory
Email:
David is an undergraduate student in the Department of Economics at MIT.
Henry O. Pollakowski
Principal Research Associate
Office: MIT Center for Real Estate, Bldg.
W31-310
tel: 617-253-3703, fax: 617-258-6991, email: pollak@mit.edu
Henry O. Pollakowski is an economist and a Research Associate at the MIT Center for Real Estate, as well as the editor of the Journal of Housing Economics. Dr. Pollakowski has done extensive work in housing economics, including influential contributions to the measurement of quality-adjusted housing price changes. He has also specialized in the study of office markets, land-use regulations, and rent control.
Dr. Pollakowski spent over a decade as a senior researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. He has also taught at Boston College, Harvard University, the University of York (UK), and the University of Washington. He is the author of numerous scholarly and professional journal articles, as well as Urban Housing Markets and Residential Location, a book focusing on the role of location. He is also the author of Housing Economics, the first Russian language textbook on the subject.
Much of Dr. Pollakowski's recent work has involved the application of economics to real estate market analysis. In addition to completing numerous industry and foundation-sponsored projects, he has developed a market analysis course that makes modern tools of analysis accessible to the student. As a faculty fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute, he has organized conferences assessing the state of residential and commercial real estate analysis. Dr. Pollakowski has also served as a Director of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and as guest editor of the Association's journal for a recent office markets issue.
Dr. Pollakowski received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Amy Sargent
Administrative Assistant
Email: sargenta@mit.edu
