When Arlen Hooks was in high school, he had a goal of using sports to get into college. This led him to making the first major decision in his life: which sport to star in. Being just under 6-foot, he knew that he didn’t have the requisite height to play basketball at a high level. Being lean and under 160 pounds, he also knew that he didn’t have the size to play football and that he would be split in two should he catch a ball over the middle of the field. Growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, he instead became involved in track and field, specifically in the hurdles. As his profile started to ascend in his senior year and was gaining traction, his career in athletics came to a crashing halt when he tore his hamstring during a crucial track meet. Determined to finish the race, he jogged over the remaining hurdles. He limped over to the trainer’s table and it was at that point when he knew that he would never be able to compete again.

With track and field now out of the picture, many of the colleges that Arlen was looking at pulled their scholarship offers. Instead, he set his sights on going to a smaller school around the Pittsburgh area in order to save money. It was his mother who instead recommended that he take a look at Notre Dame, where his cousin played on the tennis team. Certain that he wasn’t a fit at Notre Dame, and more importantly that he did not have the grades to get in, Arlen didn’t bother to apply. Then one Friday evening, as he was getting ready to go out with his friends, Arlen “lost” his car keys. When he asked his mother to help him find them, he discovered that she took them from him and would not give them back until he promised that he would apply to Notre Dame. He acquiesced. That following week he began his application to Notre Dame, and was admitted shortly thereafter. Upon learning of his admission, Arlen cried genuine tears of joy as he never thought in his wildest dreams that he would be able to attend Our Lady’s University.

When he started college, Arlen declared Political Science as his major with the stated goal of going to law school. As he began networking with attorneys in the Pittsburgh area and learned more about the profession, Arlen started to become discouraged with what he was being told. During spring break of his sophomore year, when Father Jenkins announced that students would not be returning back to campus due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Arlen took time to reflect on his chosen career path. It was then when he realized that his motivation to become an attorney was superficially tied to the status and money that came with it and that he did not have a genuine “calling” to the profession. When he returned to campus that following semester, he sat down with his guidance counselor in order to add a minor to his curriculum. It was then when he discovered a relatively new real estate minor that was being offered which drew his interest.

The world of real estate presented a new challenge for Arlen as it was a field that was completely foreign to him. Going into his new minor, Arlen jokes that he knew so little about real estate that he thought commercial real estate was a niche field of marketing where they filmed real estate commercials for agents and brokers. His struggles increased as his first real estate class was Real Estate Finance with Professor David Hutchinson, and admittedly Arlen had always been a weak math student. Determined to excel in his new field of study, he made sure to put in the extra time, attending office hours and studying with his classmates in order to understand concepts such as cap rates and discounted cash flow models. Arlen credits joining the Real Estate Club of Notre Dame (REND) and being actively involved with the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE) for his quick integration into the world of real estate. By associating with his peers, professors, and real estate alumni he was able to accelerate his learning.

When asked which was his favorite real estate class at Notre Dame, he said it was a toss-up between Real Estate Development with Professor Rafael Carreira and Real Estate Private Equity with FIRE’s Executive Director Michael O’Malley. In Professor Carreira’s Real Estate Development class, Arlen and his classmates worked on Harvard Business School case studies where they would work through real world problems and provide thought leadership through a real estate consulting lens. In Professor O’Malley’s Private Equity class, he was given a semester-long project which involved underwriting an asset, improving it, and selling it. This allowed students to live through a whole real estate cycle from acquisition to disposition first-hand and develop a unique understanding of the various roles involved, ranging from the broker to the developer on a deal. Arlen appreciated being able to get this unique experience in a classroom setting from individuals who had vast amounts of private sector experience.

Because Arlen declared his minor later in his college career, after the typical hiring cycle for a junior year internship, he was left without a job upon graduation. However, being resourceful, he leaned on the FIRE network to schedule phone and Zoom calls for what he refers to as “coffee chats,” in order to meet Notre Dame alumni in the real estate industry. During the first six weeks of his final semester, he scheduled over 60 coffee chats with alumni. He approached every coffee chat with the mindset that he had to “earn the ask,” or otherwise be someone who gave back and showed value, whether through grit, intelligence, or perseverance, therefore earning the privilege of a conversation or job opportunity. He was determined to set himself apart from other candidates in the field. A Notre Dame alum working at JLL in San Francisco forwarded his contact information to the Brokerage lead of the Raleigh office, which provided Arlen with his big break. He was given an interview for a post-graduation internship, where he spoke about what he learned in his real estate classes and his experience networking. Arlen was given the internship, however there was no guarantee of any sort that it would become a permanent job.

For Arlen, working at a real estate brokerage firm was the ideal job out of college and JLL provided just that. It provided the combination of entrepreneurship and analytical use of skills that perfectly suited his personality. Arlen embraced the “first one in, last one out” mindset, working his tail off and treating it as if it was a full-time job. At the end of the summer internship, he was recognized on a Zoom call by one of the brokerage leads in Charlotte for his hard work and rewarded with a full-time role with JLL.

In his first two years, he served as a financial analyst, supporting tenant representative brokers in the Southeast region with cash flow comparison models for clients from diverse industries and product types, including office, life science, industrial and land. He underwrote three million square feet and $400 million of transaction value. Today, he is a Corporate Real Estate Portfolio Manager and works with tenants and owner-occupants at the local, national, and global levels. His role involves crafting strategies and annual account reports to help his clients stay ahead of critical dates, capitalize on opportunities, and increase efficiency across their real estate empire. He prides himself in constantly striving to improve the client experience and his team's productivity. What he finds most fulfilling about his job is how entrepreneurs and operators can turn a simple idea into an enterprise that sustains numerous families and ecosystems.

Arlen continues to learn and grow in the industry, and it is not without its challenges. The biggest of which is developing credibility in a new market such as Charlotte, where the real estate industry is based on relationships and the connections run deep. His goals are to continue to build those relationships, serve his clients, learn, and grow. In addition to working on his own career, he tries to pay it forward to anyone seeking his guidance or help. As he noted, “where other schools have like two or three alumni at a company like JLL, Notre Dame has about 75. I was very fortunate to be part of an amazing network and owe it to them to give back.” That’s the power of the Notre Dame and FIRE network.