Claire Cormier Thielke – The Future of Cities and Real Estate – [Invest Like the Best, EP.209]

My guest today is Claire Cormier Thielke, Managing Director of Asia Pacific for Hines, the largest private real estate investment, development and management firm in the world with over $144 billion in assets under management. Claire responsible for acquisitions, development, and new business generation for Hines APAC and was also recently appointed to the board of Zillow. I was first introduced to Claire two years ago and have wanted to have her on the podcast ever since.  Her personal story is fascinating - Claire finished Stanford undergrad in 2.5 years and now teaches there - on the intersection of tech and real assets, she was a professional track and field athlete - competing for USA Track and Field, and she's run a marathon on Everest, which we discuss. Aside from her personal story and some of her amazing achievements, in the episode, we dive into the world of real estate investing including how to use pattern recognition to unlock real alpha in real estate, the ingredients that make a city special, and the surprising ROI of public art.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content check out https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/72331821/cormier-the-future-of-cities-and-real-estate   This episode of Invest Like the Best is sponsored by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis.  If you’re a professional equity investor and haven’t talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick.     Invest like the Best is a property of Colossus Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best go to https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes.  Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week.  Sign up here - https://www.joincolossus.com/newsletter.   Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Follow Colossus on Twitter at @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:03:01] – [First question] – Overview of her career and her passion for real estate [00:05:32] – The impact of Gerry Hines on her life [00:07:30] – Her theory of and what she thinks about cities [00:09:47] – Cities rhyming with each other [00:12:03] – How the highway act led to growth in cities [00:13:31] – How cities compare around the world [00:15:42] – Airplanes as time machines [00:18:42] – Overview of a building project and how it differs from investing in equities [00:23:15] – Rebuilding a city from scratch [00:25:45] – Major real estate changes we’ll be seeing in the US [00:28:30] – Real estate trends that fascinate her in Asia [00:30:10] – Real estate plugging into other industries [00:32:11] – Trends in Asia that could be ported to the US [00:34:08] – Where to see the best of cities today (post-pandemic) [00:37:28] – The ROI on public art [00:38:33] – Her time in track and field [00:41:59] – The concept of tomorrow time [00:42:49] – Cultivated other part of her training [00:45:07] – Her marathon on Mount Everest [00:46:26] – Replicating the extreme performance piece of herself in a professional setting [00:48:18] – Lessons from being a professor [00:49:53] – Joining Zillow’s board, what she wants to bring and get [00:52:17] – Her childhood and her parents, how that influenced her [00:56:26] – How one person can be actionable             [00:58:30] – Brad Gerstner and Rich Barton podcast episode [01:00:32] – Kindest thing anyone has done for her