CELEBRATING CULTURE | FEATURE STORY
Dana Getz: Totally by Accident
A JLL Journey into Property Management
Dana Getz, New Jersey’s Property Management lead, attended
Rutgers University (RU) and while there as a student, she
began her career in food services, working at TGI Friday’s in
Woodbridge. Dana graduated with a degree in Communications/
Public Relations and unsure of what she wanted to do, she
relocated to South Florida to be near her family, who left
NJ while she was a sophomore at RU. There she became a
corporate trainer for Friday’s, traveling all over the country
for new store openings and eventually taking a role in on-site
management. Due to a terrifying situation (and if you want to
know, you can ask her about it), she ended her 6-year career in
the food service world.
In figuring out her next chapter, Dana started doing temp work,
which involved a variety of jobs until she landed at the Galbreath
Company as a leasing administrator for brokers in the office. In
1997, the Galbreath Company was acquired by LaSalle Partners
and Dana transitioned into a junior leasing role. With a fresh real
estate license, Dana was volunteered by her manager to help
with a start-up at Miami Center in Miami, Florida. Not knowing
how LaSalle Partners did start-ups she “winged it” with the
existing transition team and things just clicked. She found that
she loved this work and was hired at the Miami property, moving
from leasing to the property management side.
“I don’t know anyone that plans
to be a property manager, I think
it just happens by accident.”
Dana said when reflecting back to that time. “Currently there are
college programs that focus in commercial real estate-property
management, but back in the day, and for me, it was pure
accident.”
A pivotal person from Dana’s early beginning with JLL in Miami,
was Linda Aronson. Linda was the head of the national transition
team and they hit it off immediately. Dana eventually began
working for Linda, traveling around the country, helping with
start-ups, doing dispositions and audits, and providing support
to property management teams.
While Dana was growing professionally within JLL, she remained
a huge sports fan and being in Florida she missed her beloved
NY Giants and Yankees. During the infancy of the “safe” internet,
Dana would chat on an AOL sports fan chat room with other NY
sports fans about her favorite teams. One of those other sports
fans, would eventually become her husband, Jeff.
She started dating Jeff who lived in New Jersey, and in 1998,
she was able to move back and continue to work for JLL and
Linda, doing what she had been doing, but in her home base of
New Jersey. Due to changes in JLL corporate structure in 2000,
the transition team function moved to a market based function,
Dana continued to work for JLL, supporting the hefty property
management portfolio under NYC operations and it became a
multifaceted role that supported the Tri-State operations.
After a few years of working in NYC, she was ready to get married
and was interested in working in New Jersey. In 2002, JLL offered
her a facility management assignment for Motorola, until 2005.
However, an exciting opportunity presented itself, as Linda
Aronson was now at Trammell Crow and wanted Dana back on
her team. Shortly thereafter, Trammell Crow was acquired by CB
Richard Ellis, Linda returned to JLL . As luck would have it, there
was an opportunity to re-join JLL and be on Linda’s team once
again in 2007.
That 2007 roll was at a TIAA CREF asset, Morris Corporate Center
III in Parsippany. Things were going well at Morris Corporate
Center III, and when the property sold to JPMorgan Chase in 2011,
they retained JLL and Dana’s Team as Property Manager with no
bids. Dana was able to increase staffing at the asset and reduce
some of her day to day involvement. She took on group manager
responsibilities and oversight of portfolio properties in a regional
oversight role. During this time, Dana received the firm’s Beacon
Award, which honors JLL professionals for excellence in people
management, as well as the firm’s Continued Excellence Award in
overall performance. She guided her teams to strive for excellence
in operations, achieving The Outstanding Building of the Year
Awards from Building Owners and Manager Association of New
Jersey on both local and regional levels.
In 2017, JPMorgan Chase sold Morris Corporate Center III to P3
Properties, a company with the goal of becoming the largest
private owner of office buildings in New Jersey. The owner,
Harvey Rosenblatt, knew the strong property management team
already existed and wanted Dana and her team to stay at Morris
Corporate Center III, which was later renamed MCC BLUE. P3
allowed Dana to continue to manage the building, but also offered
her the opportunity to help Harvey develop his platform. “This
was such an exciting and new opportunity for me to start from
the absolute beginning of a property management practice for
an owner”. Dana stated. As much as she would miss JLL, she just
couldn’t say no. During her time with P3, TEVA Pharmaceuticals
relocated their headquarters to MCC BLUE, later winning the United
Way of Northern New Jersey’s 2019 Impact Award as the region’s
commercial real estate project with the greatest positive impact for
moving its U.S. headquarters from Pennsylvania to Parsippany.