Student Summer Internship Profiles: Tyler Grooms & Tyler Williams
One of the many advantageous characteristics of a two year Cornell Program in Real Estate curriculum is that it provides students with the opportunity for a summer internship between their first and second year. The summer internship gives students the platform to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real world situations. The experience allows students to further define, explore, and or change their desired career path before returning to campus in the fall where they will have the opportunity to choose elective classes specific to their interests. Over the years, students have pursued a wide breadth of internships, both domestically and internationally, such as: real estate investment banking, consulting and advisory services, development, and investment management. Internships are secured though relationships the Program in Real Estate has with employers, students’ personal networks, and contacts students make during their first year in the program through conference attendance and networking functions.
Tyler Grooms, MPS-RE 2010:
Los Arboles Management is an asset management firm with about $1.0 billion under management which strives to provide best in class services. The fund invests with mostly direct equity ownership in luxury hotels, agriculture, raw land, commercial, retail, and exotic products. It was not happenstance that Tyler Grooms worked as Summer Intern at Los Arboles Management; he started his internship search the previous summer. When Los Arboles Management came to Cornell in February for on campus recruiting, he was well practiced and prepared for the interview. Tyler had listened when his elders told him that one can learn a lot in asset management, and he found away to do just that.
Upon arriving at Los Arboles Management, Tyler had to immediately draw upon his education at Cornell. Tyler’s first project was to create a real options land valuation, which is a new type of valuation just being tried out in real estate. Luckily, Tyler had the skills needed accomplish this project because he had taken Professor Corgel’s Real Estate Finance and Investments class, which covered this type of financial modeling. Tyler’s other responsibilities included traveling across North America in order to complete financial analysis, DCF property valuations, cost analysis, due diligence; and site specific, regional, and national research. Tyler worked for one month straight on a Development Supported Organic Agriculture project that proved to be one of his most unique and rewarding experiences.
“The breadth of projects that I worked on this summer solidified my interest in real estate as a diverse and exciting career choice” says Tyler Grooms. The summer internship gave Tyler, like many students, the opportunity to maximize the benefit of his education at Cornell because “the experience with Los Arboles Management sparked my desire to take courses such as Agricultural Finance and Econometrics to further expand and personalize [his] real estate skills set”.
Tyler Williams, MBA/ MPS-PRE 2011:
Summer Analyst, Westport Capital partners LLC, Westport, Connecticut
Westport Capital Partners LLC is an investment management company focused exclusively on opportunistic and distressed real estate investments believed to offer highly attractive risk-adjusted returns. Westport invests in real estate through direct and indirect property ownership, and through public and private real estate securities and financial instruments. Their investors consist of pension funds, endowments, and charitable institutions, as well as family offices and individuals.
According to Tyler, Westport Capital Partners LLC was “ahead of the curve in finding opportunity in the market dislocation recently experienced because the firm was formed as a distressed fund and already had the experience and human capital to move when opportunity presented itself.” Tyler was kept busy this summer working on valuations and underwriting of potential deals with the other analysts. In addition to evaluating real estate property investments, he gained exposure assessing risk and return opportunities across the capital markets. “I learned to benchmark direct property returns with the opportunities achievable through real estate securities and other indirect real estate investments.” Tyler also noted that the partners take a “roll-up-your-sleeves” approach, applying their real estate expertise at the ground level to create value for the assets. At Westport Capital Partners LLC he learned that fully vetting downside risk is more important than accurately forecasting the potential up-side. Because of this, he says models “focused on worst-case scenario proformas”, an approach the he discovered to be critical to successful investments in distressed assets. This approach helps Westport Capital Partners LLC to “invest in core assets without paying core prices.”