Will Silverman, 26, became in October the youngest managing director in commercial brokerage Studley’s 51-year history. Silverman was bumped up from associate director, where he worked closely with executive managing director and big-time building sales broker Woody Heller. Heller brought Silverman to Studley from CB Richard Ellis in 2003 to work with him in the brokerage’s capital transactions group.
Silverman said last month that Heller has served as his mentor for the past few years, taking him from someone with no real estate experience he was a banker at JP Morgan Chase before CBRE to someone who regularly works on all qualitative aspects of Studley’s commercial deals.
“I get an interview with this Woody Heller character,” Silverman said, recalling his initial job interview with Heller in mid-2002. “And the interview begins with me walking into a room, him picking up the phone and talking for 10 minutes, and then hanging up. And then he asked me, ‘OK, what building was I talking about?’ ‘What are the retail tenants in that building?’ ‘What are the cross streets for that building?’… And so on and so forth. We left it at ‘we like working together, but I’m very green.’ I had no real estate experience.”
Heller eventually gave Silverman a one-week tryout including nighttime tutorials on real estate at CBRE that turned into a full-time job. That tryout didn’t come as a fluke: Silverman said he pursued work with Heller for more than four months following their first interview.
Now, while at Studley, Silverman has contributed to closing about $2.1 billion in sales transactions covering more than 7 million square feet, including the sale of 125 Park Avenue and the sale of a 75 percent interest in One Park Avenue.