Mary Ann Tighe is the chief executive of the New York Tri-State Region of CBRE, the commercial real estate firm. She has been involved in 90 million square feet of commercial transactions, including the relocation of the New York Times to its new building on Eighth Avenue, and two zeitgeist-capturing moves for tenant Conde Nast, in 1996 to 4 Times Square and in 2011 to 1 World Trade Center. In 2011, Crains named Tighe the most powerful woman in New York City.

Tighe, who grew up in the South Bronx in an Italian Catholic family, was the first woman to chair the Real Estate Board of New York. She served in that position from 2010 to 2013. Before getting into the real estate business at 36, she was deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and served as vice president of the American Broadcast Companies, where she launched the A&E cable channel.

Tighe received a BA in English from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and an MA in art history from the University of Maryland. She has been married to plastic surgeon David Hidalgo since 1979 and has a son from a previous marriage that ended in divorce. Tighe and her family run a non-profit that has raised millions to fight the lung cancer.