Jessica Paindiris leads the marketing efforts at Massey Knakal through print, web and email efforts

I view my position as director of corporate marketing at Massey Knakal as the fortunate merger between my academic interest and my career ambitions. As an undergraduate at Yale, I majored in the history of art, focusing on classes about modern architecture. My senior thesis was about the merger of architectural style, politics, and real estate law that has shaped-and continues to shape-the New York City skyline, a skyline that holds much symbolic power for both our nation and other nations, as we learned on 9/11. Not sure how to translate this academic interest into a career but eager to move to New York City, I took a position at a boutique advertising agency in midtown. I honed my business skills, focusing on creating strategic communication plans for our many clients including a real estate developer. When I came to Massey Knakal, an outstanding commercial real estate brokerage firm that had long been very successful and had never had a marketing department, I enjoyed being able to create and execute plans in-house to leverage the equity they had already established. With New York City real estate as the end-product being marketed, I felt that Massey Knakal was the logical fit for my interests and skill set. I enjoy learning the details about the wide variety of buildings this city has to offer. Most challenging for me in 2008 was the actual execution of strategic initiatives to grow the Massey Knakal brand and to communicate our exclusive Territory System platform. Fortunately, top management was quick to invest in my ideas, resulting in, among many other projects, the launch of a new website in June, a strategic ad campaign, and a new direct marketing system. Massey Knakal has been very receptive to "outside the box" ideas - "outside the box" at least to the commercial real estate industry-such as a corporate blog and a sophisticated email marketing system (launching in early 2009). As a result, Massey Knakal now more clearly stands out as a leader versus the competitive set. In 2009, I hope to increase awareness of Massey Knakal beyond the New York metro area. After years of successfully direct mailing building owners in the five boroughs plus Westchester and Nassau counties, most of our potential clients are very aware of our company and have seen the new look of Massey Knakal over the past year. So now it is time to grow our awareness among potential inventors in order to bring more buyers to the transaction table for our clients. A mix of targeted print advertising, online advertising, and email marketing will hopefully accomplish this task. Certainly, with the challenging economy, investors are looking for new strategies for their portfolios-New York City property investments should be one of the options they explore. Another goal will be to grow the company's brand awareness in New Jersey. Although we have long closed transactions in the state, Massey Knakal - "NYC's #1 Building Sales Firm" is committed to growing our market share there. I think the lack of women in commercial real estate industry should be viewed as an opportunity, not a hurdle, for women. Successful women will have the opportunity to stand out even more so. Every woman I have met in the industry is very smart, savvy, and strong-willed. This industry is not for the timid, but that goes for men and women alike. Jessica Paindiris is the director of corporate marketing at Massey Knakal Realty Services, New York, N.Y.