Career Spotlight: Tara Smiley
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Name: Tara Smiley
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Tell us about your career:
I joined the multifamily world from a completely different field and started as a weekend leasing agent. Sixteen years later, I'm still here, still learning new things, and absolutely still feel like the multifamily industry is my professional home! I love being a Regional Manager as it allows me to bridge the gap between from the corporate to site team levels as well as the owner to the management side.
As property owners and managers, we're put in an amazing position to be the caretakers of multimillion-dollar assets and simultaneously, an individual's singular home. We earn the trust of asset owners and residents alike by exemplifying ownership in our product, interest in our clients, and responsibility for maximizing potential through excellence in communication, creative solutions, networking, and follow-through.
As a field, we are a pool of renaissance resources - each one of us coming to the table with different skills from varying backgrounds, delivering the depth and breadth to our industry that provides us with the strength and success that we demonstrate every day. I'm happy to call this field my professional home and thoroughly enjoy welcoming new team members into the field that welcomed me a small lifetime ago.
What advice do you have for someone just starting in your field:
Be a patient sponge! Absorb everything you can in the industry - networking, training, experienced coworkers, vendors, and residents alike. Set goals to strive for, but be patient with yourself too. Each day presents a set of new opportunities to learn from and add to your skills repertoire.