Cierra Taylor
Cierra Taylor, 24
Associate at Cerberus Capital Management
“I consider myself to be a really entrepreneurial person,” Cierra Taylor said of her move to Cerberus Capital Management this February. “I heard about Cerberus launching a real estate private credit fund that was focused on making performing loans. So, there was this opportunity for a startup entrepreneurial experience where I would get to be a Jane of all trades and cover capital markets, asset management and do my own originations.”
Importantly, the Cerberus team was also “unlike anything I’d seen in the real estate industry,” Taylor said in terms of its diversity from a gender, race, ethnicity, background and thought perspective. “I went to a liberal arts institution and benefited significantly from being around a diverse group of people in college — I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to extend that into my career.”
Further, working with Neha Santiago — head of real estate private credit for Cerberus — is an honor, Taylor said.
Taylor joined Cerberus from an analyst position at PCCP, and already has an impressive career behind her. She has closed $850 million in debt and equity investments over the past two years, including $300 million of financing at Cerberus.
The daughter of “technically talented people,” she chose to study engineering as a way to get closer to real estate. Yale University doesn’t have a civil engineering program, however, so she opted for environmental engineering in college. Her senior thesis was on the impact of building materials on air quality in certain cities. “As the industry progresses, my degree is coming in handy in that sense,” she said.
Taylor decided as a senior to go into real estate finance, finding that the best way to figure out exactly what you want to do in real estate is to touch all of it.
“That’s what investing has done for me,” she said. “I get to look at different cities, different assets, different business plans every day. I’ve grown to realize, it’s the generalism that I really love, and this is an industry that I’ll stay in probably for the rest of my life.”—C.C.
