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