Alyssa Kidd, 34

Alyssa Kidd, the Detroit-raised daughter of a chef and a dance teacher, might have spent her life as an event planner were it not for one encouraging professor at Michigan State University.

“I was in the hospitality program, and he flagged that I had almost a perfect score in his finance class and should probably think about other career tracks,” said Kidd.

Since then, Kidd has blended her old and new ambitions. After several early jobs, including one on the investment sales team of JLL’s Hotels and Hospitality Group, she joined Eastdil Secured in 2018 to specialize in hotel transactionsm, and has since worked her way up from associate to director.

Kidd now focuses on hospitality investment sales across the Eastern U.S. and the Caribbean, advising institutional owners, private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and family offices on complex hotel and resort dispositions, recapitalizations and strategic capital raises.  

“Hospitality is by far the most interesting asset class,” said Kidd. “In my first job out of school, I was an appraiser and I worked on all asset types, but something definitely drew me to, and kept me in, that field. I love traveling, I love staying in hotels myself, and I find the operation of it to be fascinating. There’s just so much that goes into it.”

Kidd has worked on the $425 million sale of PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., on behalf of Brookfield Asset Management, and advised on the $235 million sale of Manhattan’s New York Edition Hotel on behalf of a sovereign wealth client.

“It’s a really special asset to walk people through,” said Kidd of the Edition hotel. “We didn’t sell it to private equity to make a certain levered return. We sold it to a family that wants to own it for decades.”

Kidd looks forward to building on the social/networking aspects of her career, as well as working on a geographically expanded landscape of hospitality investment sales.

“Hospitality is becoming more and more global,” said Kidd, “so I’d love to spend more time continuing these national relationships versus keeping it regional.”