Geoffrey Hogan Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- Like many people, it’s hard to look over a career and choose just one accomplishment that stands out from the rest. However, if I had to choose one, it would be the opportunity I was given to help develop our student centralized operations platform here in Memphis, TN. We were able to grow out the Student Resource Center to 50+ properties (ahead of schedule) in a little over 6 months, boasting 90%+ approval ratings from both onsite team members and corporate staff.
However, this accomplishment also stands out because of all the unknown variables that we had to work coming into the project. First, it required me to move to a new city in an entirely different state. From a job perspective, it meant leaving a community manager position of a Top 100 property in the US to take a chance on this new program. Second, we were working from scratch. The program had never been developed before in student housing. There was no roadmap to mimic, we had to learn and adapt daily. In the end, we were able to stabilize the program ahead of schedule, allowing us to grow our team in Memphis and help numerous Greystar properties in all four time zones and Hawaii!
Given your past experiences, what event/ project or moment would you revisit and how would you go about it differently based on your current frame of mind?
- “If you want to be successful, you have to jump, there’s no way around it.” -Steve Harvey. If there was one thing I would do differently in my career, it would have been to tell myself to go for it earlier. In college, I was always calculated, analytical, and risk averse. When I graduated college, I was given two career choices, one to work in a safe, well-known line of work that a few of my friends were going into. Another was to work in student housing, a relatively new industry that gave me a shot as a college student. I decided to put everything into student housing and forge my own path. Now looking back, I’m glad I took my own path.
I’ve learned that no two paths are the same. I always love when people ask “where do you see yourself in five/ten years’ time?” because no one really knows. Things change, paths change. If you were to tell me three years ago that I would be sitting in the corporate boardroom in Memphis Tennessee writing for the 20 in their Twenties award, I would have called you crazy, but that’s where we are. So, in conclusion, what moment would I have done differently? I would have bet on myself sooner and bet more often!
From your perspective, what is the industry lacking to support the modern renter and how do you plan to help supply that need?
- A great solution to something that is lacking to support the modern renter is exactly what we created this year with our centralized platform at Greystar. Coming out of a post covid era, as an industry, we should be looking at ways to alleviate items off the on-site teams when at all possible, in order to free up more of their time to work on resident engagement activities. Most college students choose housing based on the environment built within the community (exciting events, friends loved living there, staff made them feel at home, etc).
Through our centralized operations platform, we are focusing on taking time consuming day to day items such as invoicing, delinquency, and other functions off the property level and completing them in our Resource Center. This frees up onsite team members time to focus more on the modern renter’s needs. This leads to higher resident and team member satisfaction ratings! With tasks lifted from onsite, the team can focus more energy on creating a fun and inclusive environment for the modern renter!