Cordelia Meserow, 34

Cordelia Meserow’s love for real estate grew from her mother, who is a residential broker in Chicago.

“I always grew up around real estate. Watching her put deals together, watching them fall apart, running with her to showings, and having that vocabulary opened me up to the idea of working in commercial real estate,” Meserow said.

The Chicago native moved east to attend the University of Pennsylvania, then interned at Eastdil Secured’s Chicago office. After graduating in 2014, she returned to Eastdil as an analyst. She first encountered Harbor Group around that time while working on a deal to sell its iconic office tower at 1 South Wacker to Manulife John Hancock for $344 million. 

But Meserow wanted to move to New York and work in asset management. So she left Chicago in 2016 and joined Shorenstein Properties. A few years later, she rejoined Eastdil in its New York office, but was laid off during the pandemic. She rebounded quickly, joining UBS’s asset management group in 2020.

“Given where the market was, as much as I enjoyed brokerage and being in a client-facing role, it made sense to drop back on the principal side,” she said. When an opportunity at Harbor Group came across her desk in 2024, she was intrigued.

“Funny enough, when I was interviewing at Harbor Group my managing director remembered me from 10 years ago on that transaction,” she said.

Meserow has since helped lease up 51 West 52nd Street, which was CBS’s headquarters before Harbor Group purchased it from Viacom in 2021 for $760 million, signing KBRA to a 16-year lease for 121,000 square feet late last year. 

She also worked on leasing 70,000 square feet at 55 Broadway, where demand has pushed leases up from $53 to $56 per square foot as nonprofits and private companies have had to exit offices elsewhere that have been converted into residential properties.

“It’s been a team effort,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard, approached tenants early to renew, and we really take the time to meet with tenants personally.”