The 2019 Women of New York Real Estate

Karen Franz

Title:

CEO

Organization:

AKRF

When Karen Franz began studying at Rutgers University, she had no idea she would end up in civil engineering. She originally began her academic career majoring in environmental science, but after an eye-opening experience during an undergraduate internship at an environmental lab, she changed course.

“I was running all these samples of water quality in the harbor,” Franz says, “and I found that I was asking a lot of questions about how the study was designed and how the samples were collected and what they were doing with the results. The lab director just looked at me and he said, ‘You don’t want to be a scientist, you want to be an engineer.’”

He was right.

Now Franz leads AKRF, a consulting firm headquartered in New York City that focuses on environmental planning and engineering. Since joining the firm in 2000, she has been a part of the development of some of the city’s most popular public spaces, including Governors Island Park and Public Space as well as Brooklyn Bridge Park.

“What’s been really exciting for me is being able to see projects from inception to their opening,” she says.

Photo: AKRF

Celeste Frye

Title:

Principal and CEO

Organization:

Public Works Partners

After spending a few years in workforce and economic development during then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, Celeste Frye took a risk and co-founded Public Works Partners. Twelve years later, she is still proudly building the company on her own terms, and doing it with the public good in mind.

“I started the firm out of a commitment to bringing the tools of urban planning and management consulting to the public and nonprofit sector,” she says.

With two teachers for parents, Frye learned to value public service early on in life. After she finished her undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, and then earned a master’s degree in urban planning from Cornell University.

Part of what she appreciates about the team she has built at Public Works Partners is that they hold similar values. The 12-member team manages six to 10 projects at a time – including clients working in education, housing and financial services.

“I love the fact that my whole team brings so much compassion to what they do,” she says.

Photo: Submitted

Nancy Aber Goshow

Title:

Managing Partner

Organization:

Goshow Architects

Nancy Aber Goshow’s passion for architecture goes back to an assignment in high school art class. Her teacher asked her to design a house and she loved the process: thinking in three dimensions, creating a space in her mind and drawing up the architectural plan.

Goshow had a vision for her career early on – she knew she wanted to be in charge – but she could not find the right fit in New York City’s architecture industry.

“I realized that the only way for me to become a leader in a firm was to start my own,” she says. “I wanted to be involved in all aspects of the project – from vision to implementation.”

Four decades later, Goshow Architects has grown into one of the city’s largest woman-owned architectural firms – completing such high-profile projects as the $68 million modernization of a federal building complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Goshow says the public sector projects she does with various New York City agencies are her proudest accomplishments.

“You can inspire people,” she says, describing one of these projects, a clinic for the dental program at Hostos Community College. “You really have an opportunity to change people’s lives.”

Photo: David J. Martin

Sadie McKeown

Title:

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Organization:

Community Preservation Corp.

A businesswoman with an interest in social issues, Sadie McKeown found that the Community Preservation Corp. – a nonprofit that finances housing projects in underserved markets throughout New York state – was an ideal match.

“It was a way for me to marry my business acumen and my business sense with my heart,” she says.

For years, McKeown helped lead the organization’s Hudson Valley office, where she drew investment to downtown redevelopment projects in small and large cities throughout the region.

“The model is one that I believe very deeply in,” she says. “We make money and that money goes back into the neighborhoods we invest in.”

Her other accomplishments include an initiative to introduce water and energy efficiency standards in housing units as well as leading CPC Mortgage Company, one of Community Preservation Corp.'s subsidiaries, to generate profit to help fund the organization’s work.

“It’s the smile on the face of the tenant who gets a key to their very first apartment in their life, the ribbon-cutting, which brings tears to my eyes that I was able to participate in the process of being able to provide someone something so important,” she says.

Photo: Ronald L. Glassman

Clarification: McKeown is also the head of CPC Mortgage Company.

Cheryl McKissack Daniel

Title:

President and CEO

Organization:

McKissack & McKissack

Growing up in a family of architects and engineers, Cheryl McKissack Daniel studied to be an engineer, continuing a family tradition dating back to when her great-great-grandfather first learned the construction trade as a slave. Her grandfather, Moses McKissack III, began the firm she now heads in 1905, making it the oldest minority- and women-owned construction and design firm in the nation. McKissack Daniel is the third generation to lead the family business.

“It’s a great American story from the standpoint of, I have ancestors … I have pictures of them who were slaves,” she says. “And to overcome that in five generations to run a very successful business is very significant to me.”

After years in the industry, McKissack Daniel still looks for ways to expand the business, never afraid to dive headfirst into something new.

“I thought to myself, either we can say we’re not qualified and we can’t do it,” McKissack Daniel says, recalling how staggered she felt when she first received rail plans related to the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, a major contract for her firm. “Or I could go ahead and figure out how to get this done.”

Photo: McKissack & McKissack

The 2019 Women of New York Real Estate