Aretha Franklin once sang, "sisters are doing it for themselves." If you were at our event last November celebrating the top 50 women in Chicago real estate, you won't want to miss our upcoming hard-hitting panel, The Real Estate Money Machine: Chicago's Capital Markets Power Brokers, Aug. 6 at 7am at the Trump International Hotel & Tower. One of our power women, Heitman managing director and global director of real estate Mary Ludgin (pictured) will be a panelist.

Mary is shaping Heitman's global evolution, today managing a staff across four continents. It's tricky keeping a value system intact and motivating people from a great distance, but informal communication is key, she says. Her research helps guide the firm's portfolio decisions (assets under management total $31B); for example, you can hedge potential downturns with demographics-driven asset classes. Mary got her MA and PhD from Northwestern and worked in urban planning and retail site selection before joining Heitman. Real estate is a practical application of her interest in politics and policy, Mary says, and she enjoys crystallizing difficult concepts on paper or in front of a crowd. Her mentor, Louis Masotti at Northwestern, always said, “By your students so shall ye be known,” and Mary makes sure to give her staff credit while employing a consensus-building management style. Married with a 15-year-old and 9-year-old, Mary is partial to good sushi and even better architecture (she's been a Chicago Architecture Foundation docent for 27 years). See Mary and our other panelists at Bisnow's The Real Estate Money Machine: Chicago's Capital Stacks Power Brokers, Aug. 6 at 7am at the Trump International Hotel & Tower. Register here.