Una O’Brien-Taubman, 24

“My whole family has always loved the brand,” O’Brien-Tabuman said, “and, so, when I started at Capricorn, they were one of the first brands I reached out to. We’re now spearheading their national retail expansion.” 

The journey to such accounts began in high school, when the Brooklyn Heights native who grew up in New England wrote reviews for the website Guest of a Guest. She would later write restaurant and retail reviews for a magazine that covered the more posh elements of the Hamptons. 

O’Brien-Taubman put these writerly pursuits to work in the scintillating world of tax law as a paralegal at Davis Polk after graduating from Barnard. “I wasn’t really interested in the tax world, and I have always been interested in retail, F&B as well,” she said, using industry shorthand for food and beverage.

A good friend was working at Capricorn, and that friend’s description of the company — which bills itself as a “bespoke retail leasing agency” — piqued O’Brien-Taubman’s curiosity. “Wow,” she thought, “that’s everything that I’m passionate about, and that’s what I want to be doing.”

Bye-bye, legal work. Hello, real estate.

In the 17 months since, O’Brien-Taubman’s remit on the tenant rep side has grown to include everything from lead generation and work with new clients such as Catbird, Steve Madden and Solstice Sunglasses to managing Capricorn’s social media. The two are not exclusive. 

O’Brien-Taubman says she uses Capricorn’s social presence to drum up business and buzz for existing clients, and to draw new ones into the fold. The former reviewer in her also pores over the real estate ink — online and in print — to find the hot new thing. 

“Who’s expanding, who’s really popular right now?” O’Brien-Taubman said of her approach. “And I will reach out to them whether that is going to the actual location of a restaurant, emailing them, calling them. Then the same thing for retail.”