As an Affiliate Faculty member of UDP since 2008 he has had the pleasure of teaching a variety of courses including Neighborhood Planning, Affordable Housing Policy and Development, Real Estate Development Studio and Real Estate Competition Prep Class.
His classroom approach is to use his forty years of experience in the public and private sectors to help students understand the realities of “real world” lessons in the context of an academic learning experience. He prefers case studies, current analyses and Internet resources as his reading choices over traditional textbooks and strives to create student engagement in the classroom.
While he does not do formal research, he is heavily engaged in Seattle’s affordable housing conversation and focuses particularly on homelessness, condominium legislation reform, transit oriented development, incentive and inclusionary zoning issues and mixed income communities.
He is an active member of the Urban Land Institute and has chaired the ULI NW Technical Advisory Committee for the past five plus years. He also serves on a number of other Boards and Commissions and regularly engages in pro bono consulting for non-profit, faith based and for profit entities undertaking projects with a social purpose. He has also been an active member of the Professional’s Council for about ten years.
Sofia Dermisi holds a joint appointment between the Department of Real Estate and the Department of Urban Design and Planning. She is the Victor L. Lyon and Alvin J. Wolff Endowed Professor in Real Estate. She is also the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Group for Real Estate (IGRE), which focuses in cross-discipline collaboration in teaching and research. In her joint appointment role she focuses on maintaining a formal two-way connection between the two departments on courses, student interests and research. This role is especially important among the MUP students who pursue the Real Estate specialization or have interests in real estate courses, for which she serves as their advisor.
Dermisi has an interdisciplinary approach in her teaching and research as real estate is one of those fields someone can have significant flexibility in focusing on different uses (e.g. office, residential, retail etc.), scales (local, national, international etc.) and aspects (e.g. market analysis, development, investment etc.). Real estate is also typically linked with other fields such as social and economic, construction among many others, which help us understand and possibly predict in the short and long-run expansion and contraction patterns of the real estate markets. Her area of research has always focused on understanding the evolution of office markets and the effect of internal and external shocks in downtown areas. Office markets have evolved significantly through time and understanding how real estate markets react to deferent economic conditions helps predict future market shifts in a highly cyclical industry. The adoption of sustainable practices by office buildings is another aspect of her research especially in regards to existing buildings, when the capital investment tends to be more significant than a new construction. The last but not least aspect of her research focuses on the effect of disasters on office and hotel markets.
Dermisi has received various grants for her research and received multiple awards highlighting her contribution to the field. She also serves as the elected Program Chair of the American Real Estate Society conference in 2018 and the Vice President of the Society. She will be the President of the American Real Estate Society in 2019-2020, and only the second woman to be elevated by members in such a position, but the first non-US born.
Dermisi, holds a Diploma in Planning and Regional Development Engineering from the University of Thessaly-Greece (1998) and a Master and Doctorate in Design Studies (1999 and 2002 respectively) from Harvard University.
H. Pike Oliver focuses on advancing sustainable development. Early in his career, Pike worked for public agencies, including the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research where he was principal contributor to An Urban Strategy for California (1978.) For the next three decades, he worked on master-planned communities at the Irvine Ranch in Southern California and other properties in western North America and abroad. Prior to relocating to Seattle in 2013, Pike taught real estate development at Cornell University and directed the undergraduate program in urban and regional studies. He is a graduate of the urban studies and planning program at San Francisco State University and holds a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA. Pike serves on the Thriving Communities Task Force of the Urban Land Institute’s Northwest District Council.