By Joyce Jackson
Laura Rodriguez started her career in Real Estate while she was in college by helping her husband in his new role as a superintendent. For one of her college projects, she decided to interview her husband’s boss. By the end of the interview, she was offered an entry-level job. Since that first job, Laura has worked in a variety of capacities in building management. Her positions have provided experience in all building types throughout New York City including low, medium, and high-rise residential and mixed-use buildings in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, as well as experience with commercial real estate, co-ops, condos, and retail. When it comes to real estate, you could say she’s seen it all!
Laura has experience in all areas of Real Estate management gaining more responsibility with each of her job changes. Her first job in real estate was in a general administrative role. From there, she went on to work as a Rent Administrator, collecting rent and processing rent deposits for both residential and commercial tenants. She next worked with building maintenance as a Maintenance Manager where she responded to tenant requests for maintenance and planned and managed vacancy turnovers.
Laura continued to progress in her real estate career, moving into a position as a Property Manager where she managed day-to-day building operations as well as tenant accounts and other administrative responsibilities for the building. Laura’s next position as Director of Operations pushed her professional growth even further. With 135 buildings in four boroughs, including supervising four property managers, four maintenance coordinators, and all on-site building staff, she also managed all building improvements and oversaw violations and regulatory code compliance for all properties. She now serves as a Senior Risk Control Analyst.
Laura, who is also a NYARM certified Property Manager, first became familiar with the training courses offered by the CUNY Building Performance Lab (CUNY-BPL) when she attended a NYARM (NY Association of Realty Managers) webinar where James Lane, a Program Manager at CUNY-BPL was one of the speakers. She later received an email from James introducing the courses offered by CUNY-BPL. When she checked the site mentioned, she immediately became interested. She later signed up for and participated in Building Operator Training and the new Gas Safety Training course for Owners and Managers.
Laura found the courses particularly helpful because they provided a lot of material with helpful information such as illustrations, pictures, and instructional procedures. They covered topics on both specific building operations and regulatory compliance, as well as providing useful handouts. She also found that the instructors for her courses were very knowledgeable and thorough.
Although Laura has many years of experience in all areas of real estate including management, building maintenance, and compliance, she found that the BPL courses have solidified the why, how, and when to exercise procedures and applicable managerial styles in property management. She feels the courses could be very helpful for both newcomers to the field as well as more experienced people. Based on her experience with BPL courses, Laura has recommended the classes to her peers and highly recommends the classes to anyone in the Property Management field.