“It’s been a real ride,” Colliers International EVP Lynn Reich said of her four decades in commercial real estate. Reich, one of fewer than 1,000 professionals nationwide to hold the dual designation of CCIM and SIOR, summed up her career with those words at the outset of an interview conducted by her friend and one-time coworker Mark Goode, founding principal of Venture One Real Estate, during the recent Connect Industrial Midwest at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, IL.

Originally, Reich envisioned a career as a CPA. “Can you imagine me sitting in an office, auditing books?” she asked. Eventually, she gravitated toward commercial real estate and the riskier path of commercial brokerage, at a time when the industry had few women in its ranks.

One of that handful, though, was Goldie B. Wolfe Miller, a colleague whose negotiating skills inspired fearful admiration, and who would eventually organize what today is known as the Goldie Initiative in support of advancing women in CRE. The organization will honor Reich at its annual gala this year.

Reich said she was inspired to pursue a career in industrial brokerage by the late Milton Podolsky. “He told me, ‘You’re pretty smart, but industrial real estate is no place for a lady.’” In a recent 12-month period, Reich closed some 2.4 million square feet of industrial transactions.

Asked to identify the challenges faced by women in commercial brokerage today, Reich said the risks are the same regardless of whether you’re a woman or a man. “The business isn’t for everybody,” she said. ”You have to have a lot of passion, you have to be able to stand getting kicked in the shins, and you have to be a little crazy.”

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