Lynne Sagalyn

Lynne B. Sagalynis the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School, where she was formerly the director of the MBA Real Estate Program and the founding director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate. 

An expert in real estate development and finance, Sagalyn has published extensively on a broad range of issues in the fields of urban development finance, public/private partnerships, and real estate finance. In addition, she has developed scores of cases for graduate-level teaching of real estate finance and investment strategy and been an innovator in curriculum for real estate study.

She is widely known for her research on city building. After more than twelve years of work, Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan (Oxford University Press) will be released on September 9, 2016, just days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Her earlier books on city building included Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (MIT Press, 2001), and, Downtown Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities, co-authored (MIT Press, 1989).  

Professor Sagalyn’s activities outside academia are diverse. She has been a litigation expert, a consultant to both private firms and public agencies and a member of the New York City [Board of Education] Chancellor’s Commission on the Capital Plan. She has done extensive executive teaching, particularly for Tishman Speyer Properties and the Urban Land Institute. In the corporate world, she serves as Vice-Chair of UDR (NYSE: UDR) and as a director and chair of the audit committee of Blackstone Mortgage Trust (NYSE: BXMT). In the not-for-profit realm, she is a member of the board of directors of the Regional Plan Association (RPA) and co-chairs its New York Committee, and serves on the board of the Skyscraper Museum, and the audit and compliance committee of Planned Parenthood New York City.

In addition to her more than twenty years at Columbia Business School, Sagalyn has held appointments at the University of Pennsylvania in both the School of Design (City Planning Department) and the Wharton School (Real Estate Department), and at M.I.T., Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where she taught courses in public policy and real estate finance as part of the school’s pioneering degree program in real estate development.  

Professor Sagalyn received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master of City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University, and a B.S. with distinction from Cornell University. 

Memberships & Affiliations

Outside Activities

- UDR (NYSE:UDR), Vice Chairman. - Blackstone Mortgage Trust (NYSE:BXMT), Board member and Chair of the Audit Committee. - Board member, Regional Plan Association. - Audit and compliance committee member, Planned Parenthood New York City. - Board Member, Skyscraper Museum