Alicia Glen
Founder and managing principal at MSquared
Last year's rank: 73
Following a stint as deputy mayor for New York City housing and economic development, Alicia Glen ventured out to create MSquared, a real estate firm focused on mixed-income projects. Now in its fifth year, MSquared is coming off one of its most successful turns around the sun yet.
“2024 was unbelievable. We took our game to the next level,” Glen said. “We did deals worth over half a billion dollars, which was huge. We did six really interesting deals across the country that are all mixed-
income deals.”
One deal that got a lot of attention was toward the end of 2024, when MSquared acquired 3333 Broadway — Manhattan’s biggest residential building — in partnership with Liberty Mutual Investments for $323.5 million from Brookfield Properties.
“We were able to lead the investor group to buy what is a truly 50 percent market-rate, 50 percent affordable building,” Glen said. “We did that because I thought it was really important that capital like ours acquire buildings like this, so that we can continue to improve them and to maintain this income mix — which is this very precious commodity — and be able to demonstrate that this works, and then investors can make money.”
MSquared’s other deals were in California, Washington state and New Jersey, where — along with a few partners — the firm closed a deal to build a mixed-income building in Newark as part of an extension of the Newark Museum of Art’s campus.
Outside of MSquared, Glen added another feather to her cap last year when the Gateway Development Commission secured the full funding for the Gateway Program, which includes constructing a new rail corridor under the Hudson River. Glen serves as the commission’s co-chair.
“One of my proudest achievements of 2024 was securing all of the funding necessary to execute the $16 billion Gateway Program, the largest infrastructure project in the country,” she said. “Building the new Hudson River tunnel and repairing the existing tunnels will grow rail capacity and improve what is considered one of the most unreliable and unpleasant commutes in the country, all of which is critical to our region’s long-term economic growth.”
