Shaping Our City Skyline

Becky, who was talking to the L6, is currently Head of Storey, the flexible workspaces offer created by British Land, where she has worked for the last 13 years.

British Land is one of Europe’s largest listed real estate investment companies, with a commercial property portfolio worth more than £13 billion, including Broadgate, near Liverpool Street Station, Canada Water in Docklands and Paddington Central.

Becky left LEH 20 years ago and, after graduating from Nottingham with a Geography degree, started out on a two-year graduate programme at Morgan Stanley as an Investment Banking Analyst.  Following the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, and wanting to be closer to the properites, rather than the spreadsheets, she moved to the Crown Estate to work on the Regent Street portfolio at a time of siginificant regeneration.

While there, she completed a part-time Masters in Real Estate at Kingston University, before joining British Land in 2010.  She has since moved around the company holding several different positions, including Head of Office Analysis and an Asset manager of the Broadgate portfolio. She is now in charge of its flexible office space provision.

“It feels like I’ve had a chance to make lots of choices and experience different things,” says Becky. “As a company, our ambition is to create attractive destinations.  We think about why people want to come to a space and what we can do to make our developments an exciting place to be. Our stapline is 'Places People Prefer'.

“We do this by creating great environments both inside and outside our buildings and use our scale and placemaking skills to enhance and enliven them. This expands their appeal to a broader range of occupiers, creating enduring demand and driving sustainable, long-term performance.”

Becky says people often assume that having a career in the property market means being a builder or an estate agent. But she explains: “It’s about so much more than that. It’s about shaping cities and enhancing lives. We’re always thinking about what people want from an office space, how to inspire people to come to a retail area, what we can do to create cool places to meet up. How do you develop an area to make it interesting to come to work? What we do brings cities to life and changes how people interact and live.”