The Alfred A. Ring Distinguished Speaker Series brings real estate leaders to campus to speak with UF real estate students and faculty.

Brian Gale started his real estate career by going in the side door: he sold a copy machine to CBRE. Gale’s persistent salesmanship impressed the folks at the giant commercial real estate firm so much that they hired him. Twenty-nine years later, Gale is vice chair of Cushman & Wakefield in Miami, where he leads a team that manages the region’s largest office space portfolio. In his Jan. 26 presentation, Gale advised students starting their careers: join a big firm, find a good mentor and “absolutely outwork everyone.”

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David Kern made real estate loans worth billions of dollars as a banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other lending institutions before he switched to become a principal at Foundry Commercial. Now the market leader of Foundry’s Tampa office, Kern spoke Feb. 22 about the challenges of repurposing offices to other uses, the opportunity for industrial real estate and how the spike in interest rates has slowed development. Having lived through a few boom-and-bust cycles, Kern said, “there’s an opportunity in all phases of the real estate market, and this is going to be no different.”

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Todd Jones, principal at Tampa-based RealAdvice, is a nationally recognized expert in real property valuation and tax matters. On March 23, he outlined federal, state and local property tax law, explained differences between real, tangible and intangible property, and provided examples of how RealAdvice helped firms avoid overpaying taxes. Jones’ company removes uncertainty over assessors’ determination of property taxes owed in a transaction. “That’s one of the biggest challenges in valuing real estate and because of that uncertainty many deals will fall apart,” he said.

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Jim Heistand, chairman of Orlando-based Parkway Property Investments, spoke April 13 about lessons he’s learned in his decades-long career, which include risking a successful job to start his own real estate investment firm and taking private a public real estate investment trust. With suddenly higher interest rates, the real estate market has entered a challenging time. But he said Parkway continues to focus on opportunities in submarkets throughout the Sunbelt, including redeveloping Houston offices to multifamily apartments.