Real estate is a challenging – some might even call it cutthroat – industry.
There are, however, some professionals who maintain the spirit of fierce competition without sacrificing integrity.
Mary Lentz is one of them.
That’s the consensus of clients and colleagues of Lentz, a vice president and principal at McCall & Almy, a Boston commercial real estate brokerage firm. Lentz, who has been at the firm for the past 15 years, is responsible for day-to-day management activities, and plays a key role in business development. She oversees several of the firm’s marquee clients, including Partners HealthCare system and its hospital network. Lentz has also grown the company’s portfolio of leading research institutions and nonprofits, including the Broad Institute and the Center for Blood Research at Harvard Medical School’s Immune Disease Institute.
Neil Schneider, a principal and executive vice president with McCall & Almy, described Lentz as a “velvet hammer,” who gets the job done and ensures everyone walks away as friends.
Alan Fein, deputy director and executive vice president of the Broad Institute, said that Lentz played a key role in helping the biomedical research institution decide to expand its Cambridge headquarters.
“To have the kind of faith we have in Mary, you have to believe that person is absolutely honest,” Fein said.
Even those with opposing interests praise her.
Michael Cantalupa, senior vice president of development at Boston Properties, has often faced Lentz during negotiations in which he is the landlord and she represents the tenant.
“Operating on principles of integrity and hard work, Mary’s skill set includes high intellect, energy, enthusiasm, street smarts and an ability to flawlessly execute. No detail is overlooked during a transaction she works on,” he said.
All In The Details
Lentz, who has always worked in male-dominated industries, determined early in her career that mastering the details was one way to level the playing field.
Her most challenging job, she said, was with SCA Services, a waste management company that hired her as assistant treasurer.
“Talk about male dominated,” she said. “I was fresh out of business school, working with the various waste hauling operations, each of which had their own, very distinctive, very male-oriented personality.”
Her boss sent her to an assertiveness-training program, she recalled, so that she could learn how to be effective “without appearing either too nice or too mean.”
But what actually helped Lentz attain the confidence to be assertive, she said, was to “feel completely prepared, having thought through the various outcomes and next moves, analyzed financially the alternatives … before going to any meeting or negotiation.”
“I think this also provides the level playing field that I, as a woman, needed,” she continued. “The other side realizes that ‘you know your stuff,’ so the rules of the game change. Gender is taken off the table – or mostly taken off the table – and I have the confidence I need to be effective.”
Lentz also worked for Arthur Young as a senior auditor, and was a partner at First Winthrop Corp., and director of leasing and marketing at The Chiofaro Co. From 1992 to 1996, she was chief operating officer at Copley Properties.
Bill McCall, founder of McCall & Almy, said Lentz not only makes the commercial real estate industry more accessible for women, but encourages all of her colleagues, both within the firm and the industry, to reach higher.
Lentz is active in professional organizations, and is a member of the Wayland High School building committee. She is also a trustee of the Boston Arts Academy; a trustee of the Newton-Wellesley Physicians Hospital Organization; and an overseer of Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
She has a bachelor’s degree from Boston College and a master’s degree in finance/planning and control from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
