IIJournals JPM-Special Real Estate Article Collection | Page 16
cess as a competitor to our firm. As the relationship
continued to develop, we had the pleasure of being one
of PPR’s very first advisory clients, and Susan was a positive inf luence on the development of Clarion’s internal
research advancement.
Susan was tireless in her use of data to support
her investment theses and was simply the best in entertaining the audience, whether it was many or one, and
convincing them to embrace her findings. We brought
her into one of our annual Clarion partner meetings, and
we received great value for that simple invitation. Her
hard work, drive, and presentation efforts were broadly
inspirational, and I am convinced that many at Clarion
learned much from her. Fortunately, she was also fun to
debate, and I found her to be self-effacing when accused
of sounding infallible.
Susan was an entrepreneur in the passionate
delivery of investment research. She developed and then
sold PPR for real money and made it work, in part, by
adding proper succession to its staff. She was a free spirit,
and her inquisitive nature too her far beyond work to
travel, relationships with many people from different
walks of life, and even to living on islands off of Maine
and Puerto Rico after her PPR retirement.
Susan was truly an extraordinary person. She was
a researcher, an entrepreneur, a real estate practitioner,
and an industry leader, and she truly marched to her
own drum. I consider myself fortunate to have known
her well.
—Steve Furnary
I first met Susan at an academic real estate meeting,
where she discussed a paper. She was at UNUM Insurance at the time. After she moved to John Hancock, our
paths crossed often. I remember having dinner with her
and discussing whether a standalone firm that specialized in institutional real estate research was viable. She
demonstrated that it was not only viable but that it could
blaze new paths. Susan loved pushing boundaries, trying
things that hadn’t been done and reworking things that
hadn’t fulfilled their potential. I saw this firsthand when
we were on the PREA Board, and later, working on
the Real Estate Information Standards effort. She was
an outstanding mentor to a generation of professionals.
I miss her, and I sure wish I had a “Free the Damn
Data!” button.
—Michael Giliberto
Special R eal Estate Issue 2013
You always knew exactly where Susan stood on
any issue. She used every tool possible to get her points
across: economics, logic, statistics, humor, campaign
buttons (Free the Data!), multicolored fonts, New
E
ngland-isms, and rock song lyrics. At AEW she helped
explain the real estate asset class to managers of pension
funds and endowments who had been burned by risky
and irresponsible investments in the 1980s. At PPR she
brought her passion for “four-quadrant analysis” to a
broader swath of the investment management industry.
Finally, at Hawkeye Partners, she shared her experience
with clients and colleagues by finding ways to implement many of the concepts she had been writing about
for years.
It has been a great privilege to work with Susan as
a co-editor of the previous issues of The Journal of Portfolio Management’s special real estate issue. Her insightful
comments, colorful writing style, and sharp wit made
her an ideal co-conspirator. Her friendships with Peter
Bernstein and Frank Fabozzi were instrumental in
PREA’s decision to co-sponsor these special issues in
2003. Taken together, these special real estate issues
are now among the most-cited publications that target
investment professionals. Susan was instrumental in the
idea behind these special issues and in their execution.
She will be missed.
—Jacques Gordon
The first time I met Susan Hudson-Wilson, she
was passing out “Free the Data” buttons. This was quite
some time ago, when many real estate professionals still
believed that keeping data closely held was the way to
go. Susan correctly recognized that “freeing the data”
would be of great benefit to the commercial real estate
industry, just as it had been to the broader stock and
bond markets.
That small event tells you a lot about her. Not only
did it prove Susan to be prescient, but it also ref lected her
belief that broadening the base of knowledge was important and vital—to the real estate industry and the wider
society. She acted on this belief in many ways, and not
just within the confines of PREA. It was a