Maggie Coleman
Chief investment officer in real estate equity and global co-head of portfolio management for North America at Manulife Investment Management
Maggie Coleman had no idea that her career trajectory would land her as a C-suite leader in real estate investment. She had originally intended a career in academia while in college in Chicago.
“Commercial real estate was not something I had any familiarity with, so I took a risk and started talking to people, and really had this epiphany that this was an area where it would leverage all my skill sets,” Coleman said. “I felt like I could be very successful. It’s a very entrepreneurial [industry], and balances both the quantitative and externally facing aspects that I like to spend my time on.”
Coleman worked for JLL and Sera Global before joining Manulife in August 2023 to help expand the firm’s North American business. Today, she manages strategies for Manulife Investment Management — a firm with over $1.3 billion in global assets under management — across its North American business lines.
She’s seen the real estate business go through significant transitions over the last decade, and she uses the lessons learned from those moments to focus on long-term growth opportunities, and identify new investors and different opportunities within those industry shifts.
“LPs are getting more institutionally minded,” she said of limited partners. “The breadth of LPs and types of LPs looking to expand into private markets and into real assets and then into real estate is expanding. You have a more diverse capital base, and then you’ve got this institutionalization of sectors that have been sitting along on the fringes. The alternative sectors are becoming more prominent just as the use of real estate changes.”
With close to 20 years of industry experience, Coleman said she’s notched several career wins, acknowledging that you don’t really notice they’re wins until you have some time to reflect.
“I think the decision to step into a new role [at JLL] in a moment of distress was a win,” she said of starting at the brokerage in 2006, just before the Global Financial Crisis. “I certainly feel like I’m in the midst of a win with this existing team in terms of what we want to do in scaling the real estate platform for Manulife. When I look across the platform and the talent that’s there, it’s certainly something that I’m excited to be a part of. So, I feel like I’m midway through a win right now, and I’m excited to see how this transforms over the next couple of years.”
