Left: Blair Evans | Right: Riya Luthra
We are thrilled to announce that the winners of the inaugural BREAA Student Fellowships are graduate student Blair Evans & undergraduate student Riya Luthra. Blair & Riya were selected from a stellar group of candidates. Both are exceptional women with promising real estate careers ahead of them.
Please join us in congratulating Blair & Riya!
Blair Evans is a Haas MBA and Interdisciplinary Real Estate Certificate candidate. Blair has leveraged her background in economics and corporate real estate and to take a deeper dive into UC Berkeley’s real estate offerings. She has gained the praise of professors for her outstanding academic record and has built a growing network of peers as Co-President of the Haas Women in Leadership group, Vice President of Academics for the Berkeley Real Estate Club, and as the Haas Soccer Club Co-President. Blair joins BREAA with an unequivocal drive and intellectual curiosity to learn anything and everything about real estate and has made it clear that real estate is her industry of choice. Her work experience at Gap, Inc. and internships at Bridge Partners and Starwood Capital are just the beginning of what is sure to be a promising career in real estate.
Blair hopes to use her time as a BREAA Fellow to connect with the broader Berkeley real estate community of alumni and students and we are excited to welcome her as our inaugural Graduate BREAA Fellow. Following graduation in 2021, Blair hopes to join an institutional real estate firm and something tells us she will have no shortage of offers. In the interim, Blair is hard at work at Haas, including on the 2020 UT Austin National Real Estate Competition. We wish her and the team the best a luck and another Cal win!
Riya Luthra is a Haas School of Business Undergraduate pursuing a Business Administration degree with an emphasis in Real Estate and a Minor in City Planning. From the beginning of her UC Berkeley tenure, Riya has been dedicated to the Berkeley Real Estate community since joining the Undergraduate Real Estate Club (UREC) in her first semester where she now serves as the club’s Co-President. As a first-generation college student, she has already made impressive strides in academia and is celebrated by her professors and mentors, all while balancing impressive internships at Cushman & Wakefield, DivcoWest, and Hines. With her added experience as Student Ambassador for the ULI’s Women’s Leadership Initiative Committee and her California Real Estate Agent License, it’s clear Riya has an incredibly bright future in real estate, and we are excited to welcome her to BREAA.
Upon graduation in 2022, Riya is hoping to pursue a career in real estate investment and eventually launch her own investment team. As a BREAA Fellow, Riya is seeking to expand her network, build lasting relationships, and find mentors within the Berkeley Real Estate community to further her career aspirations. However, given Riya’s resume…she could mentor us on a few things too!
The inaugural BREAA Student Fellowship is generously sponsored by Perkins + Will, Bill Falik, Bob Lalanne and Alice Devine. Please contact a BREAA Board Member if you would like to join this generous group in supporting future student fellowships.
FELLOWSHIP COMPONENTS
- $3,000 Tuition Award
- Reimbursement for real estate-related educational programming, training, professional development and industry memberships
- Registration to all BREAA events
- Mentorship by an industry professional who will advise and provide guidance regarding professional development, participation in BREAA and the Bay Area commercial real estate community
- Participation in BREAA leadership meetings as a Student Fellow
- In-depth access to the established UC Berkeley real estate alumni network
