It wasn’t the most auspicious time for Michele Babcock to drop one career for another.
The onetime software seller jumped into commercial real estate just as it was on the verge of a recession in the late 1980s. She already had witnessed a real estate bust in Dallas earlier in the decade.
Still, Babcock decided to become a retail broker for CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Southern California operations in 1988.
Babcock said she was bored selling computer software and equipment to pharmacies in Texas and got hooked by the energy of broker friends.
“I just knew that whether it did or didn’t (bust), long term this was the business I wanted to be in,” she said.
Babcock, 47, was one of seven women honored at the Business Journal’s 11th annual Women in Business awards luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Irvine on May 26.
Today she is executive vice president of operations with Costa Mesa-based Donahue Schriber Realty Corp., a private real estate investment trust that owns and develops shopping centers. Babcock is the only woman on the company’s five-member executive board.
Babcock oversees the company’s 70 shopping centers in California, Arizona and Nevada. The malls’ leasing, management and personnel responsibilities are hers. Together, the centers are home to some 2,000 shops and eateries.
“She has great enthusiasm for the business and for life in general,” said Patrick Donahue, president of Donahue Schriber.
Babcock earned a bachelor’s degree in business from California State University, Los Angeles, and then followed her parents to Texas.
In the early 1980s, she took a job in customer service for a company that sold computer systems to pharmacies. She switched to the company’s sales side and rose to national sales manager.
But her job seemed stale after a while and she was intrigued by tales of friends who worked in Texas’ boom and bust real estate market in the 1980s.
“I loved the people,” she said of her friends in commercial real estate. “I loved the dynamics and the energy.”
Her parents later moved back to California, and Babcock decided to give commercial real estate a try. Retail brokerage seemed the most dynamic option, she said.
The early 1990s were slow. She cultivated clients in Los Angeles for CB Richard Ellis, though it was hard going and sometimes big lease deals collapsed, she said.
“You wake up the next day and it’s a new day,” Babcock said. “In any business, you are going to have those days.”
While women have made inroads in commercial real estate, most brokers still are male. Sherry Bower, the county’s most prominent female real estate executive, took over management of CB Richard Ellis in Orange County last year.
Bower, in a previous interview, said less than 10% of CB’s 100 brokers in OC are female. But she said the company has more women working for it now than in the past and has made diversity a priority.
“It’s not a difficult environment for women when they are willing to work very hard to compete,” Bower said.
Babcock said she never thought about commercial brokerage as a man’s world. In the late 1980s other women were going into it, and she knew of several female success stories, she said.
Babcock did 45 million square feet of lease deals in her seven years with the brokerage.
Then in the mid-1990s she got a call from Donahue Schriber, which was looking for someone to lease some of its projects. The company seemed professional and fun and she wanted to expand her real estate experience, she said.
“She had some real estate training, but we felt she could really blossom at our company once we put her with some people that could teach her the retail merchandising business for our shopping centers,” Donahue said.
She started with a few centers and eventually took over leasing for 33 shopping centers totaling 4 million square feet. From 1998 to 2000, she increased occupancy in the company’s portfolio from 92% to 96%, with returns on store rents rising 16% in Southern California.
Babcock later switched to development and helped build the company’s holdings in Arizona.
She said Donahue Schriber long has been a “gender blind” company. Half of its vice presidents are female, Babcock said.
“This business is continuing to change,” she said. “More and more females are coming into the business. It’s not about gender anymore. Maybe it once was.”
Babcock lives in Newport Beach with her husband, Dwight. Her hobbies include golf, boating, running and surfing,the latter with difficulty.
“Surfing is very frustrating. That’s a new sport for me,” Babcock said. “I have been able to get up (on a surfboard) but not for long.”
