Years before brokering the DC area’s largest real estate deal ever (we’ll get to that in a sec), Meany & Oliver’s Sharon Oliver grabbed her MBA from GW, which “catapulted” her career, leading to a job with Equitable Life’s suburban MD office as a leasing broker. She’d end up running that office and its large leasing portfolio before stints with Baruetta and Grubb & Ellis. A job as development titan JBG’s first female partner followed, giving her exposure to large and intricate deals. She and former colleague Phil Meany started their own shop in ’04, and not long after she and Phil helped broker Corporate Executive Board’s 600k SF lease in Rosslyn—“the deal of a lifetime” as Sharon calls it, and the biggest private-sector deal ever in town. Having a sense of timing is one of the skills Sharon says has guided her: “You have to maintain your ability to anticipate change.”