You’d remember Ann Crowley for repping General Growth in its re-tenanting of Mondawmin Mall in ’08. It became the first enclosed mall 50 years earlier when Jim Rouse built it, and Ann helped revamp the property with a Target, Marshalls and Shopper’s Food for an underserved, urban community. Now, she’s launching a career with Baltimore Mediation, expecting a good share of real estate clients considering her experience with Rouse, GGP, and, before them, smaller developers.

When GGP reorganized, she would’ve had to move to NYC to keep her job, so Ann (above, with husband Chris) left after 15 years in the retail development world and recently earned a master’s in applied behavioral science (so she knows why you can't stop eating doughnuts). The idea behind mediation (as opposed to lawyering up), she tells us, is that people have the capacity to solve their own problems, and mediation (she typically gets the job done in a three-hour session) provides a forum for people to do so. Plus avoiding litigation is a bonus for tenants and landlords or developers and contractors facing time constraints. (Above, Ann and Chris were snapped on a visit with to two daughters in North Carolina.)

But before she starts fixing all of Baltimore’s problems, Ann left yesterday for her fourth service trip with her church to Nicaragua. Above are her sons Mike and Gabe and their interpreter, Victor (left), on last August’s trip, a six-day jaunt that coincided with teacher in-service to bring the latest education methods there.