Daniel Roberts, 27

Daniel Roberts grew up playing hockey in a suburb of Hartford, Conn., where he learned that he liked being a defender.

“You have to be aggressive and be responsive,” he said. “Being able to have all the play in front of me, I could direct the play better and make good plays from that position.”

Roberts’s ability to learn how to work in a group has come in handy at Brookfield, where he works with a close-knit team on the company’s leasing side. “Having that team mentality to make sure we’re sharing information and have each other’s backs, whether it’s a negotiation or covering each other for tours, is something I learned through hockey,” he said.

Roberts didn’t even step foot in New York City until his sophomore year in college at Marist. He got an internship at Brookfield the following summer and started full-time as an analyst in 2019. Nine months later, the pandemic happened, and he was suddenly working in a market that favored tenants. (Brookfield Property Partners on the other hand lost about $2 billion.)

Roberts soon began to work on filling Manhattan West, an 8-acre superblock, where he has leased 4 million square feet of office space across two towers. He has also marketed properties for Brookfield Place, one of the few downtown office sites that has remained a destination for tenants.

“There’s really no other campus that interacts with the water the way that Brookfield Place does,” he said. “It’s kind of an oasis. In Midtown you’re bumping into people, but at Brookfield it feels like you’re outside. It’s much more peaceful, and that’s how we sell it.”

Roberts still plays hockey once a week in a league in New Jersey with people ranging in age from 21 to their 50s. “It can get a little testy but there isn’t much hitting,” he said. “We’re just trying to make it through the hour without passing out.”