"Meetings can get a bad rap but if done correctly, they can — and should — be some of the most productive parts of your day," Gozen Hartman says. To subscribe, click here. To submit a letter to the editor, click here.
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Sign up for our daily newsletter here When she and husband Chris started Fairlawn Real Estate nine years ago this month, they had 10 employees and 300 units. And now? “Our real estate investment, management and development business has grown to 140-plus employees and 5,400 units,” company CEO GOZEN HARTMAN says. “It has been exciting, fun and a ton of hard work.
” Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Hartman spent most of her youth in C-U, relocating to Urbana with her parents when she was all of a year-and-a-half, then moving to Champaign during her middle school years. In between immigrating here and graduating from Uni High: “two separate sabbatical years to France, which were amazing,” says Hartman, the daughter of two parents in academia and now a mother of four herself. The alumna of the University of Illinois (bachelor’s in civil engineering) and the University of Texas (master’s in transportation engineering) took time out to answer questions from Editor Jeff D’Alessio in the 239th installment of our weekly speed read spotlighting leaders of organizations big and small.
For lunch, "I like to pick up a kale Caesar salad and ginger plum iced tea from Art Mart. Sometimes, I will also get a cinnamon pecan coffee cake muffin." If I could trade places for a week with any other business person in town, I wouldn’t mind switching with .
.. newly named Gies College of Business Dean Brooke Elliott.
I respect her professionally and she is a close friend. She has a very successful career in academia and given that I was close to going down an academic path, it would be interesting to see what a week is like for her. When it comes to the hardest thing about being a leader .
.. there are two things: trying to balance all the competing needs of my business and needing to make quick decisions as often as possible — and being comfortable with some of them being wrong.
The single-most important question I ask job candidates during interviews is ...
what are you most proud of and why? My philosophy on meetings is ...
make sure there are objectives, an agenda and that resulting action items have owners. Meetings can get a bad rap but if done correctly, they can — and should — be some of the most productive parts of your day. My single favorite moment of all-time in this job was .
.. when Fairlawn was featured in a two-minute clip during the opening of a major national real estate conference.
That was a proud moment. I can’t live without my ..
. blue Fairlawn journal. I keep all my major personal and professional to-dos in it, and take it everywhere.
The three adjectives I hope my staff would use to describe me are ...
positive, smart and fun. On my office walls, you’ll find ..
. two whiteboards, a poster of our core values, a TV and a pinboard with some memories and motivational quotes. My one unbreakable rule of the workplace is .
.. don’t make assumptions.
If you find yourself answering something with “Well, I assume (fill in the blank),” then stop and verify what you are about to say. For lunch, I like to ..
. pick up a kale Caesar salad and ginger plum iced tea from Art Mart. Sometimes, I will also get a cinnamon pecan coffee cake muffin.
I wind down after work by ...
changing into cozy clothes and talking to my husband and kids. Gozen Hartman The last luxury in which I indulged was ..
. a three-night wellness retreat in Palm Springs with a close friend. The retreat included everything from yoga to meditation to educational sessions on things like matcha.
I focused almost entirely on myself for three days and came back feeling amazing. The most beneficial college class I took was ..
. Transportation Systems Analysis with Dr. Chandra Bhat at UT Austin.
It was one of the first upper-level graduate courses where everything clicked for me. Dr. Bhat, who was also my graduate advisor, taught us how to truly analyze data — always digging deeper beyond obvious conclusions — and extracting the “so what” from it.
I always remember the “so what,” which he engrained in his students. "I exercise every day for anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes. This is really important to me.
Running is my foundation, and you will find me running four to five times a week in the early morning — this is when I solve some of my toughest issues." The last good book I read was ..
. “Lessons in Chemistry,” by Bonnie Garmus. Somehow, I found the time to devour this book within one week.
I’m up and at ’em every day by ...
5:30 to 6 a.m. For a workout .
.. I exercise every day for anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes.
This is really important to me. Running is my foundation, and you will find me running four to five times a week in the early morning — this is when I solve some of my toughest issues. I also stretch every day, do Pilates twice a week and substitute the bike and walking on non-running days.
I just re-started strength training after about a decade hiatus and am really enjoying it. For a first job ..
. I babysat from a young age but my first “real” job was at Sweet Indulgence Bakery, back when it was at Old Farm. At the time, you could legally start working at age 14, and I remember interviewing for the job before my birthday and then my first day being within a few days of my birthday.
I had a couple of shifts a week, including ultimately opening and closing the store on Sundays. (How did a 14-year-old do this?) This involved manning the counter/serving customers and making simpler desserts during the downtime — cookies, eclairs, chocolate-covered strawberries, etc. I learned so much in that job and am grateful Debbie hired me.
As for my worst job ...
this is a tough question as each of my jobs contributed to me positively in many ways. I suppose looking back, cleaning the public pool restrooms after a long day of lifeguarding wasn’t awesome, but even that gave me perspective that hard work can come in a variety of ways and that things aren’t magically clean, or organized; there are hardworking people behind everything we do and everything around us..
