Maria Stamolis, CIO and head of investment management at Lincoln Property Co., which has about $20 billion in assets under management, says she is not afraid to pivot.
“I was building a career from scratch and didn’t have much to lose,” said Stamolis, who grew up in Brooklyn and was the first person in her family to go to college. Stamolis planned to go to law school but pivoted to real estate.
“In New York, you can’t help being interested in buildings,” she said.
At age 29, Stamolis moved to Los Angeles to help liquidate the portfolio of bankrupt Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. where, as part of a small team, she could be creative and influence outcomes, she said. When that job ended, she moved to GE Capital, which was a more structured environment, she said.
There was no such thing as mentorship or sponsorship 25 years ago, and so, she said, “I made it my life’s work to have senior executives take an interest in me.”
Her father, who was her first and best mentor, taught her she could do anything, Stamolis said.
She left GE to work for its largest West Coast client but hit a crossroads when she wanted to have children. Work-from-home and today’s extended leave options didn’t exist, so she took a personal sabbatical.
“I truly believed if it was supposed to work out that I got back into the industry, that I would be successful,” Stamolis said.
After about six years, Stamolis took a job at Canyon Partners, which spanned several strategies including the Canyon Johnson Urban Funds, an urban real estate investment business of Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Canyon. At Canyon, she was co-head of real estate and head of asset management. After 16 “amazing” years building a business, she decided it was time to go to the next level and last year joined Lincoln.
Stamolis also keeps busy teaching a yearlong real estate investment course at Southern Methodist University’s Robert and Margaret Folsom Institute for Real Estate in Dallas. She said she will meet with any student who asks but, “I tell them my feedback will be very honest.”