Name: Mark Theine
Job title: Executive vice president – asset management
Name of employer: Physicians Realty Trust
Years in current job: 8 Years
• Why did you choose a career in real estate? "While I’d love to say that I specifically chose commercial real estate, the truth of the matter is that I met my incredible mentor, John Sweet, who changed the trajectory of my life. John hired me as an intern while I was studying finance and accounting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to assist in the creation and management of a private equity fund focused on investments in health care real estate facilities.
"Although I was just starting my career in commercial real estate, I knew a bit about health care from my own experience as a patient at Children’s Wisconsin. Collectively, our family has spent a significant amount of time in health care facilities due to a congenital heart condition that required six of our family members to have open heart surgery to repair aortic aneurysms. These patient experiences fueled my drive and passion for high-quality health care real estate investment, ownership, development, and management.
"I’m proud to have helped establish a Milwaukee-headquartered company investing in high-quality facilities so health care professionals can provide the outstanding care nationwide that my family received all those years ago. I owe it all to John Sweet."
• What is your advice for someone trying to advance in a career in real estate? "Three words: Network, listen, and read. Acting quickly upon market information sourced through your professional and personal network is often the key to securing a real estate investment or career opportunity.
"Milwaukee is fortunate to have many great real estate networking organizations, such as NAIOP, to meet and learn from leaders in the commercial real estate industry. Networking is not just a one-time event, though; it’s essential to follow up and proactively reach out to build genuine relationships and then take advantage of those opportunities to listen to other’s experiences and wisdom that can help shape your career path. Lastly, read constantly. Read the Milwaukee Business Journal, LinkedIn, and industry publications to stay informed on the latest transactions and trends both within the local market and nationally."
• What is the most memorable project you have worked on? "The most memorable project I have worked on provided the platform for all that we’ve been able to accomplish since—our initial public offering of Physicians Realty Trust in July of 2013. The IPO, in which we raised $130 million on the New York Stock Exchange, provided the foundation for us to expand our real estate portfolio to nearly $5 billion in investments in 36 states while also growing our team from three founders to almost 100 team members nationwide today.
"As our team has grown, we’ve prioritized building an authentic, family-centered, and award-winning culture that has been recognized with numerous 'Best Places to Work' awards. Most recently, we were recognized as the top real estate company on Modern Healthcare’s 2021 Best Places to Work.
"Taking our company public also provided more visibility and more accountability as we strive to be leaders in our corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts. Our firm has gained national honors for our ESG efforts as we focus on how we can 'Invest in Better' for the health care partners and communities we serve. As a co-founder of the only publicly traded REIT in Wisconsin, I am incredibly proud to work alongside Gov. Tommy Thompson (chairman of our Board of Trustees) and John Thomas (president and CEO) to continue growing our company and team for years to come."
• How has the pandemic impacted the way you work? "Health care real estate truly showed its strength and resilience over the last 18 months as the world battled the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, patient care continued to shift away from the acute care hospital facilities reserved for Covid patients into convenient outpatient medical office buildings in the community, like those owned by Physicians Realty Trust.
"While the pandemic slowed many business sectors, the need for safe facilities to provide medical care only increased. We were proud to work closely with our health care partners to ensure that our facilities remained open to patients through numerous safety protocols. We also recognized our responsibility to be a resource for our partners as they navigated periods of uncertainty while also being good stewards of our shareholders’ investments. We were proud to collect 99.6% of rent payments in 2020.
"In addition, like everyone, we traveled less during the pandemic, hosted more Zoom calls with our hospital and physician partners, and worked remotely to protect the health and safety of our team and their families. The pandemic also challenged us to re-focus on our internal culture and invest even further in employee health and wellness initiatives – ensuring that our team had all the resources they could need to adapt to ever-changing personal and professional challenges.
"Despite these challenging times, DOC has operationally and financially outperformed its peers as we proudly served our hospital partners and their health care providers, the true heroes throughout the pandemic."
• What is your secret for getting things done? "My style for getting things done is getting up early, exercising, and tackling the big tasks first before the day gets busy with meetings and calls. As a team, the secret to getting things done is to build lasting relationships and care about the success of others. DOC would not be the company we are or have the culture we do without its people. In fact, we use the acronym C.A.R.E. to sum up this vision for success — collaborate and communicate, act with integrity, respect the relationship, and execute consistently."
• Finish this sentence – Real estate is cool because… "it’s a tangible asset that can create tremendous value for the community with some creativity, commitment, and C.A.R.E."
