Angela Aman hadn’t even lived in her new house for a year when the wildfires broke out in Los Angeles.
The Kilroy Realty CEO’s nanny was the only one home when word came to evacuate, and she managed to retrieve the family dog, Aman’s children’s passports and a few outfits for the family. It wasn’t long though before Aman’s Palisades home was gone.
That was the second major disaster Aman had faced close up.
Fresh out of Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.S. in economics, Aman started working for Deutsche Bank across from the World Trade Center only a few months before the 9/11 attacks.
Aman didn’t want to dwell on either tragedy during a recent sit-down interview in Kilroy’s headquarters, on the second floor of an office building the publicly traded real estate investment trust owns in West Los Angeles.
Before starting at Kilroy in January 2024, Aman worked at Brixmor Property Group in New York City. The South Dakota native was hired as CFO of the retail center REIT in May 2016 and also became its president in September 2023.
At Kilroy, founded in 1947, Aman oversees ownership of 120 office buildings spanning roughly 17 million square feet primarily on the West Coast, with 6.2 million square feet of it in the San Francisco Bay area and 4.3 million square feet of it in Los Angeles.
Its L.A. holdings total 12 office buildings in Hollywood, West Los Angeles, Culver City and Long Beach — including Westside Media Center, Tribeca West, Aero and Blackwelder, Columbia Square, On Vine and Sunset Media Center.
Kilroy’s portfolio also comprises life sciences properties in San Francisco and San Diego, 1,000 apartment units and 64 acres of undeveloped land.
Among its big projects, Kilroy opened the second phase of its 3 million-square-foot Kilroy Oyster Point life sciences campus in South San Francisco in February. Kilroy reportedly recently settled a legal battle with neighboring property owners over control of a downtown San Francisco alleyway. The property gives the REIT an access point into its redevelopment of the Flower Mart into a roughly 2.3-million-square-foot office campus.
Aman spoke with The Real Deal about quality-of-life issues, office occupancy and playing Rummikub with her kids.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Born: June 15, 1979
Hometown: South Dakota
Lives: Los Angeles
Family: Divorced, 2 kids (16 and 7)
“As I show up in places, oftentimes I’m a little bit unexpected, but I feel like I’ve learned over the years how to navigate that.”
Where do you live?
I live in Los Angeles — in Little Holmby [in Westwood].
You’re pretty new to L.A. How have you found it?
It’s very welcoming, much more welcoming than I expected it to be.
You moved from New York. How’d you like the city?
I grew up in South Dakota. I went to University of Pennsylvania for school, then I was in New York for four years, Chicago for 11, then back to New York again for eight. So I had two different stints in New York. I liked New York. I had a complicated relationship with New York the first time. I moved there right out of college. I worked for Deutsche Bank and our building was right across from the World Trade Center. So that really impacted my experience in New York the first time around. It was very different the second time.
Were you at work on 9/11?
I was there. I don’t want the whole thing to be about that. It was so long ago at this point, but I hadn’t gotten to work just yet. I got off the subway that morning at the World Trade Center exit after the first plane hit, but before the second plane, so I was standing right outside, beneath the South Tower when it was hit. Our building was destroyed. They had a disaster recovery location in New Jersey for a while, and then we had a temporary location in Midtown.
Kilroy’s assets are not in areas impacted by the L.A. wildfires. Did they impact your employees?
Just one, and that one happened to be me. Other L.A.-based employees were impacted.
Where did you go when you were displaced?
We stayed at the Fairmont Century Plaza for a couple weeks until I could find a long-term rental.
Were there a lot of people staying at the hotel in the same predicament?
Yes. It was interesting. You’d sit down at dinner at the restaurant at the hotel, and there’d be somebody next to you who was going through the same thing. Somebody across the way would overhear you and come over and introduce themselves.
Did you feel a sense of community?
There were many moments during the process where we felt a tremendous amount of support from people in the area. We didn’t have a huge sense of community in the Palisades because we’d been there such a short amount of time. We moved in in June. Both my kids are at private schools outside the Palisades. So my daughter is in school in Santa Monica, and my son’s school is in Studio City. And that was really a blessing, because both of them could go back to their actual schools after they were closed down for a week.
Have you been back to the Palisades?
I have not. I had a basement in the house, which means everything’s in the basement that I can’t get down to. So I can’t really sift through things or look for mementos or anything like that.
How do you think L.A. is doing?
It’s definitely been our slowest market. We’ve seen some interesting things percolating, like in Culver City. There have been some signs of tech coming back in the market. So I think that’s all been encouraging. We don’t have anything in Century City but I feel like we’re going to be the beneficiary of continued activity in Century City that eventually spills over here.
There’s a lot going on in L.A. with the fires, the homeless, crime, etc. If you were mayor right now, what would you do to improve things?
I think focusing on quality-of-life issues, which include safety, addressing homelessness, addressing some of the drug use, things like that, are critically important to making residents and businesses feel good about making long-term decisions. And we’ve seen that really play out in San Francisco over the last few years, where the voting population has really made some strong statements about their priorities on those issues. They put a new district attorney in place. San Francisco now has a new mayor. San Francisco has a moderate majority on the board of supervisors. I think everything you’ve heard from the new administration in San Francisco is that they’re primarily focused on these issues as a means to revitalize the city. I’ve been up to San Francisco probably at least once a month over the course of the last year, given our portfolio up there, and you can really see and feel the difference each and every time I’m up there. Things feel better.
You replaced John Kilroy Jr., the longtime leader of the company and son of Kilroy’s founder John Kilroy Sr. What’s the most challenging part of becoming a CEO at a family business?
This is the fourth real estate platform I’ve come into at an executive level. It is the first company that has more of a family legacy, but it is a publicly traded company, and has been for many, many years now.
You’ve been in this role for a little over a year. What’s your greatest achievement to date?
We’ve made a lot of changes on the platform. So we’ve made some key senior hires, some promotions — really, just getting the company set up from an organizational standpoint the way I would like it to be, so that as market activity recovers, we’re really positioned to execute and to outperform. And I think we’ve made a ton of strides on that front over the last year.
What’s been your biggest career gaffe?
My first role as a public company executive was as CFO for a company that IPO-ed in 2012 called Retail Properties of America, or RPAI. It was an open-air shopping center platform, similar to Brixmor, based in Chicago. I ended up leaving through what was a mutual separation in 2015. They were coming from very different directions, and I, in many ways, lacked the professional maturity at that point in my career to understand how to close that gap.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I have very high expectations. I believe everybody in the organization can meet those high expectations, but I have very high expectations.
It is still unusual to be heading up a massive public real estate company as a woman.
There aren’t many of us.
Do you feel like you deal with discrimination?
I don’t want to overstate it, but it’s a combination probably of being a woman and being my age. As I show up in places, oftentimes I’m a little bit unexpected, but I feel like I’ve learned over the years how to navigate that.
What’s Kilroy’s work-from-office policy?
We are in the office four days a week. We are remote optional on Fridays.
What percent of your tenants are back in the office?
We’ve seen pretty high office utilization rates or physical occupancy rates in markets like San Diego in particular; Austin also has been pretty healthy for a while. San Francisco has lagged.
What’s the rate in San Francisco?
It’s probably 60-ish percent at this point.
How about in L.A.?
L.A. has been a little bit lower, probably between 50 and 60 percent.
In November 2024, you sold Kilroy’s corporate aircraft for $19.8 million. Why?
Our portfolio is concentrated in five markets that are relatively close together and all pretty easy to get to. And we felt like using commercial airlines was a better alternative for us as a company.
What’s your morning routine?
I try to wake up pretty early, at 5:30, do some reading and drink coffee — lots of coffee, walk the dog, get the kids ready for school, get ready myself. I try to run on the treadmill a few days a week in the mornings. I’m usually in the office at around 8:30.
What did you have for breakfast today?
Today is a bad example. I just had a protein bar, but usually it’s Greek yogurt and blueberries.
What’s your secret indulgence?
Reading fiction. I love to read, but it’s hard sometimes to feel like reading fiction is productive. I really need it as an escape. I think I’m a better, more grounded person when I’m in the middle of a book I’m enjoying.
“You’d sit down at dinner at the restaurant at the hotel, and there’d be somebody next to you who was going through the same thing. Somebody across the way would overhear you and come over and introduce themselves.”
What fiction book are you reading now?
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” by Gabrielle Zevin.
How would your family describe you in three adjectives?
Busy, supportive, present, I hope.
Is there any specific activity you do weekly with your kids?
We do Friday night, pizza night. You know, we love playing board games together. We’re a very competitive group. We play Rummikub. We play a lot of Uno. We play a lot of Rack-O. We play a lot of Bananagrams.
What keeps you up at night?
I sleep pretty well. I’m not much of a ruminator. I make a ton of lists, so as long as it’s in the book, and I know I’m going to address it the next day, I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.
Now for a quick L.A.-related lightning round: Tommy’s or In-N-Out?
In-N-Out.
Erewhon or Trader Joe’s?
Trader Joe’s.
Weed or booze?
Booze — oh my mother is gonna read this!
Palm Springs or Santa Barbara?
Santa Barbara.
Disney Hall or Hollywood Bowl?
I’ll go with Hollywood Bowl.
Poke or tacos?
Tacos.
Uber or Waymo?
Uber… Can I change my answer to Waymo? They’re a tenant in Silicon Valley!