Meet L pt. 2

Early career

In the early 1990s, in the middle of the savings and loan crisis, L and her two sisters founded a firm together. A minority and woman-owned business that contracted directly with the Resolution Trust Corporation, the federal agency tasked with managing and disposing of billions of dollars in failed assets from collapsed savings and loans. Their firm took on a large portfolio of commercial and hotel assets and loans, and managed them through resolution.

There is something rare about a real estate firm founded by three sisters during a federal crisis. The traditional line in this industry runs father to son. Theirs ran father to daughters, and the daughters then ran the company themselves. That is the LMD thesis with a federal contract attached to it.

That was the second reinvention. Daughter of the work to co-founder, in business with her sisters, on the strength of what her father had taught them.

From there, L joined Kenneth Leventhal & Company during its 1995 merger with Ernst & Young, the moment two firms became one. The combined practice, EY Kenneth Leventhal, was the real estate accounting and consulting arm inside one of the world's largest firms. Founded by Kenneth Leventhal and Stan Ross, the original Leventhal firm had been known across the industry as the place real estate was understood at the deepest level. L stepped into that legacy at the exact moment it was being absorbed into a global Big Six firm. It was where she learned the language of capital, of structure, of how money and land move together at the highest levels of the business.

She had now seen the work from three different vantages: from inside the firm she had built with her sisters, from inside the premier specialty practice in the country, and from inside a global Big Six firm. Few people at any age have that range of perspective.

That was the third reinvention. Family co-founder to corporate operator at the highest level of the industry…

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