Event Celebrates Tony Kepano Joint Center for Real Estate
Alumni, friends, faculty, students, and real estate industry professionals gathered at Tech Square Tavern on April 1 to celebrate the launch of the Tony Kepano Joint Center for Real Estate. The center was established through a commitment from Tony Kepano, IMGT 1986, vice chairman of Industrial and Logistics Advisory & Transaction Services at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm.
The Tony Kepano Joint Center for Real Estate seeks to advance interdisciplinary learning, research, and industry engagement by building on the strengths of the Scheller College of Business and the College of Design’s School of Building Construction across finance, construction, city planning, engineering, and emerging technologies.
The event began with remarks from Anuj Mehrotra, dean and Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Chair of Scheller College, and Ellen Basset, dean and John Portman Chair of the College of Design, who detailed how the initiative came together and how it aligns with the Colleges’ strategic priorities. “We want to be the most connected, the most entrepreneurial, and the most experiential business school in the world," Mehrotra said.
Bassett noted that the center serves as a differentiator for Georgia Tech. “This sets an excellent example of what two Colleges can do Funded by Laliberte and other generous alumnae and friends, the Pathway of Progress: Celebrating Georgia Tech Women Challenge is a dollar-for-dollar $1,000,000 match for endowed scholarships for students with financial need who demonstrate a commitment to advancing women in STEM and for endowed programmatic support. To learn more or make a gift, contact Meagan Burton-Krieger, executive director of Campaign Operations and chief of staff, at meagan.burton-krieger@dev.gatech.edu. together, and it’s an unusual mix for real estate centers,” she said. The center “will really speak to the broader community, not only in Atlanta but nationally and globally.”
Matthew Devon, a third-year business administration student and president of the Georgia Tech Real Estate Club, also spoke. Devon said that by forging connections across campus, the Kepano Joint Center creates a “unique competitive advantage for Georgia Tech students to gain an interdisciplinary perspective” on the real estate industry.
The center’s namesake spoke of his challenges as a Tech student with an interest in real estate but few curricular lanes to pursue it. “The purpose of this center is to ensure that students will not have to go through that,” Kepano said. And, as the real estate industry continues to be shaped by data and technology, he asked, “What better place to be than Georgia Tech to lead at that intersection?”
To learn more or make a gift to the Tony Kepano Joint Center for Real Estate, contact Duante Stanton, senior director of Development, Scheller College of Business, at dstanton30@gatech.edu, or Kelly Smith, director of Development, College of Design, at kelly.smith@design.gatech.edu.