Louise Roger

I am an architect by training. I started out working as an architect, mainly on asset types other than logistics, mostly offices or retail, on restructuring and conversion projects.

That is it, for example taking a residential building and turning it into offices, or the other way around. The same on retail projects. Then I went back to school to specialize in urban planning and real estate. During that year of specialization I worked, still on rehabilitation and change-of-use projects in retail, but also on similar issues in industry, looking at the management of industrial brownfields.

Brownfields? We have perhaps heard the word more for retail sites, but they are old buildings that no longer find a use today. Exactly, abandoned. And how do we give them a use again today? Which also ties into all the questions we can ask about managing urban sprawl and land use. I had the chance to work on those topics in a fairly academic way. Then I joined AEW at the Frankfurt office, where I worked for a pan-European logistics portfolio as an analyst. After that I joined the Paris office to join the asset management team, logistics, light industrial and industry, which is grouped together like that at AEW, as an asset manager, specifically to work on development, on repositioning buildings, or on last-mile logistics.

Exactly, and so the assets located mainly on the outskirts, it can also be inner-city, but rather on the edges of town, with the whole question of how users will occupy these places so they can then serve the city with as little disturbance as possible. Of course. So these questions come up a lot today, which is why AEW created a fund really dedicated to this type of asset. And since these buildings barely exist yet, there is a lot of restructuring, in any case new buildings to create for this use, which means defining the entire brief. So that is what I work on in particular. And maybe a few words about AEW: it is a third-party asset manager, so we have different real estate strategies since we work for different clients, either funds or other clients, each with their own strategy, which gives us potentially quite variable holding periods; but overall we are a player with fairly long holdings, so when we take a position in an area it is for a long time, so we do things carefully. So meaning you support for... We hold a building for a very long time.

With different needs, I mean, we often think first of e-commerce, but not only; you have food, fresh produce... Exactly, there is every type of user, so you do not necessarily find the same ones in big logistics as in last-mile assets, but you also find industrial players repositioning themselves today, notably onto these assets. So we have about 200 tenants today.

I really work for the French entity of AEW, so today our scope is French only. European, I suppose, then. And there is AEW Europe, which has offices in each country where there are assets to manage, so we have logistics assets in several countries today for AEW. And maybe I should define it this way, because it seems logical and obvious when you are in the business, but not for everyone, I think. Exactly. As an asset manager, we are responsible, it is not necessarily like this everywhere, but at AEW, for the asset from its acquisition onward; we do not handle the acquisition part, that is a separate role. You get the project. Exactly. So we work with the acquisition teams, but the roles are separate. And from acquisition until the eventual sale of the building, all the time in between is part of our scope. So we handle both the development monitoring, if it is a new building, with the whole construction side, then the leasing, the relationship with the user, and all its management.

If they are identified. Yes, if they are identified. Sometimes not, but if they are, absolutely; and then throughout the ownership of the asset there can also be restructuring works, and there again it is the asset management teams who handle it.

And maybe, in a few words, among the missions that drive us most today, and especially across the entire existing portfolio we manage, all the issues around improving energy and environmental performance, which are truly at the heart of our concerns. We are supported enormously by teams within AEW for this, but they are also fully within the asset manager's scope.

During my studies, architecture schools are rather, in any case you find a great many women in the cohorts, which is surely meant to gradually tip the profession toward more women, which has not necessarily been the case historically. That is maybe what I notice in real estate too, because the place of women is increasing little by little. Would I have had a different path? I am not really convinced. I think my path is really the accumulation of my actions and my choices, which perhaps fits my generation more, where I had the chance to discover these sectors and therefore join them, which perhaps was not the case before. So I feel less, in any case, that a difference was made. I always had the impression I was given my chance completely fairly. And the team I am in, which I joined fairly early in my career, is a gender-balanced team, so maybe that also removed some biases I might have run into otherwise.

Within AEW France there is indeed parity between male and female employees. And that is also true within management. So it is rather a source of pride, I think, for the teams. To see it happen there are actions. In any case you feel there is real momentum, the company cares deeply about moving in this direction. There are still many points of vigilance, since these things are never acquired forever, so you have to stay vigilant continuously. And you feel that momentum within AEW in all the recruitment that still takes place. And then, within our careers, I have now been here more than 4 years, even 5 if I count Germany, we are also supported, men and women alike, and kept alert to these topics if they are flagged as problematic.

We can be offered training that may be dedicated, for example, to female leadership, precisely to help us fight our own... biases we may have, of course. That we can all have. There is also, yes, a lot of vigilance on recruitment, even for work-study positions, precisely to reach parity at that stage, because I think AEW is quite proud to try to recruit a pool of talent and to stimulate them and keep them in the company for quite a while, so from the entry into the most junior positions there is careful attention to that balance.

It is a topic, I think, that really plays out over a very long time, societal change. Which has evolved a lot in the end, I think you have seen it. So first, thank you so much for the energy you put into all these organizations, which I think are quite essential and contribute directly to these changes. Then there are certainly a great many angles to address this topic. I think representation is about making yourself known from university onward, I mentioned work-study students, but in any case very early, making this sector known, which is perhaps not the best-known in real estate. It also has to be a key that opens that door to everyone. And also perhaps setting up simpler, more one-off actions, but mentoring, which surely, generation after generation, must bear fruit over time.

Mentoring, there is some within AEW. It is not reserved only for women.

There are dedicated contacts, identified for us as dedicated to these topics, which is indeed really useful. And then, at company level, whether we turn to management or human resources, there is continuous vigilance on these issues. That seems important to me. We can see we are in a sector that is evolving enormously and will need to adapt. And I think great diversity and a good mix within teams is absolutely essential for the resilience of these companies. So it is also an asset to stand out tomorrow.