'If I Get Knocked Down, I'll Get Up Every Single Time': A Global Investment Chief Reflects on Grit and Resilience

Coming up in the industry, Carly Tripp – now Global Chief Investment Officer and Head of Nuveen Real Estate Investments – was often one of the only women in the room. She remembers being highly focused on delivering impeccable work; she was always putting her hand up and asking for more responsibility. 

“Grit is so incredibly important, regardless of gender,” Tripp says. Taking initiative and resiliency are also key: “If I get knocked down, I will get up every single time,” she says. “I will always win that battle. And when you’re starting out in the business, you can sometimes focus too much on the noise. You let things distract you. At the end of the day, you’re in control of how resilient you are and how you show up.” 

Tripp firmly believes leaders must be focused on developing their teams professionally – and said “a lot of transition needs to occur at the executive level within this industry to change our mindset to be more culturally inclusive.”

“Ultimately (at Nuveen) we are about hiring the best people and giving autonomy to do what they do well,” she says. “And if your people see you being authentic, that reverberates across the culture.”

As Global Chief Investment Officer and Head of Investments for Nuveen, one of the world’s leading investment managers, Tripp leads a team of more than 200 investment professionals responsible for all transactional and asset management functions and is also a member of the firm’s Global Executive Leadership team. She’ll share these insights and more in her keynote on the second day of the GlobeSt ELITE Women of Influence conference in Deer Valley at month’s end. In the keynote, titled “Voices of Influence: The Evolution of Women in CRE,” she’ll talk about what it means to truly take a seat at the table in a male-dominated industry and how women executives can position themselves as an invaluable member of the senior leadership team.

The first in her family to attend college, Tripp was “always really interested in how people built things…I was always curious about how people became successful,” she says. She grew up in a bedroom community 12 miles as the crow flies from Washington, D.C., and watched the town grow from cornfields to a master planned community as she grew up. That sparked an interest in real estate: while at the University of Maryland, Tripp spent a summer at the University of California Berkeley, where she took real estate courses from well-known lender Dennis Williams of Northmarq, which she describes as a “truly excellent experience.”

After an internship at Morgan Stanley in college, she began her real estate career at LaSalle Investment Management, where she was a member of the portfolio management team.  Before ascending to the Global Chief Investment Officer role, Tripp served as CIO of the Americas for Nuveen Real Estate, Global Head of Real Estate and Alternatives for TIAA’s $260 billion General Account, and Deputy Portfolio Manager on the TIAA Real Estate Account, where she managed over $13 billion in transaction activity. 

Check back for more insights from Carly Tripp at the upcoming Women Of Influence keynote address in the coming weeks.