Patrice Derrington

MBA '01

Dr. Patrice Derrington is the Marc Holliday Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development Program (MSRED) at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She also serves as the Director of the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). A recipient of the prestigious Harkness Fellowship, she received her Ph.D. in architecture/civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, she received a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard University, a Bachelor of Architecture degree with First Class Honours and University Medal from the University of Queensland. She began her teaching career at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and has more than 20 years of real estate industry experience on Wall Street, where she worked as an investment banker and financial advisor to major individual and institutional clients.

Commencing as a Vice President in the Real Estate Finance Group at Chemical/JP Morgan Bank, Dr. Derrington primarily worked on restructuring defaulted real estate loans and syndicating property investments both in the US and internationally. As a Managing Director, she joined the boutique investment advisory firm of Spears, Benzak, Salomon and Farrell, where she directly managed the real estate assets of David Rockefeller’s $3.25B global portfolio. She has also served as an independent Director of various publicly traded REITs including AmeriVest Properties and Charter Hall. In 2002, Dr. Derrington was appointed Vice President of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Governor-appointed state agency, where she oversaw the formulation of the $20B Economic Revitalization Strategy for Lower Manhattan. Since 2010, she has undertaken investment advisory work focused on the distressed real estate assets held by various regional and community banks, executed the deceased estate strategy for private Rockefeller entities, and was appointed to the board of investment manager, QIC, which has substantial retail assets in the USA and Australia.

Academic activities provide “bookends” to industry experience with early positions as a tenure–track Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting Associate Professor at MIT, recently as Clinical Associate Professor at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, and now as professor and dean of the Real Estate Development Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation. She also serves on the Senate of the Columbia University and is the Chair of the Senate’s Campus Planning committee. Within just 5 years under her leadership, the program has achieved global recognition and now attracts applications up to 4 times admitted students. Diversity has substantially improved with increased female and minority representation. Her research addresses the design and development of the built environment, critiquing financial calculative practices, and proposing new methods and technologies that will improve the efficiency, professional responsibility and outcomes of the property industry. Representative of this scholarship is her recently published book, Built Up: An Historical Perspective on the Contemporary Principles and Practices of Real Estate Development, London: Routledge.