Shami Waissmann.
Shami Waissmann, 28
Director of Lending Strategies at Lev
As our Young Professionals issue was going to press, Shami Waissmann was stepping into a brand-new role. After three years at L&L Holding Company, she joined tech-focused brokerage Lev as its director of lending strategies.
Waissmann’s interest in Lev was piqued when she began hearing about the technology the firm was using to move commercial loan transactions online. “To me, the value the company was adding was so obvious,” she said. “It’s one of those moments when you say, ‘Oh, my god, why is no one else doing this?’”
She added: “We see all these industries that have been leveraging technology in so many different ways and it really doesn’t make sense to me that real estate hasn’t been a massive focus of venture capital for the last 10 years.”
Waissmann will be focused on digitizing lending for Lev’s clients, and her previous career experience has positioned her well.
Her most recent role at L&L was vice president of acquisitions and development. Waissmann worked there on some of the most buzzed-about transactions in New York City, including TSX Broadway, the developer’s $2.5 billion mixed-use development in Times Square, and the $1.5 billion redevelopment of 425 Park Avenue. Prior to L&L, Waissmann spent three years at UBS, latterly as a financial sponsor and leveraged finance analyst.
“Growing up in an environment like an investment bank, and then applying that in a more entrepreneurial environment [like L&L], was something that was incredibly useful,” she said. “I now want to take that a step further here at Lev, and be able to leverage both of those previous experiences at a startup.”
Waissmann is also co-host of the “Tangent – Real Estate & Technology” podcast on Apple and Spotify and a guest lecturer at NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.
The advice she gives to anyone mulling a career in real estate is to start reaching out to people in the industry. “The more that you connect with people in industry, the more that you learn and listen, the better,” Waissmann said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean reaching out to the most senior person at every firm, but rather reach out to people across the organization because what you can learn from an associate is very different from what you can learn from a vice president versus a principal.”—C.C.
