Miranda Hekimian Career Background
What is your biggest career achievement?
- Imagine this – it is one year into the COVID-19 pandemic and you’ve heard murmurings of rental assistance funds being available to residents later this year. Your manager asks if you can support one of our Directors with managing the rental assistance program within our company. Little did you know that saying “yes” to a seemly simple support request would spiral into a nearly all-consuming project that would last 18 months.
What started as a request to provide support very quickly morphed into directing the whole process. I had first-hand involvement every step of the way, including property and individual program registration, developing custom reporting in our systems, team member and leadership training and support, reviewing resident agreements for accuracy, and working directly with community and county organizations.
I am proud that at the end of the Large Landlord program, my efforts provided nearly 1,000 King County residents living at Greystar communities with rental assistance and collected over $13 million in rent relief funds for our clients. As a rental housing provider, my greatest achievement is keeping 1,000 low-income, deserving households in their homes during an unprecedented time.
Given your past experiences, what event/ project or moment would you revisit and how would you go about it differently based on your current frame of mind?
- Think about every conversation you’ve had today. Did they all have an impact on you? Or did some bounce off without any more thought?
I can vividly remember the heart-wrenching feeling I felt when a peer provided feedback that they felt I had dismissed their comment in a group setting. I recall the referenced conversation and remember how I responded. I see now that I responded far too quickly, in the wrong way, without even thinking how that must have felt to this person. This is a conversation I play over and over in my head, wishing I could go back and address it in a more thoughtful and supportive way, and unpack it through purposeful conversation.
But time isn’t on our side. The moment is gone, the conversation is over, and I had no realization of how that person interpreted the interaction until weeks later.
Now, I pause. I will forevermore assume that what seems like a casual quip has a deeper meaning. Being a supportive leader means being there for your team, even if they only open their door the smallest crack. To this person, I’m sorry. Thank you for teaching me a valuable lesson.
From your perspective, what is the industry lacking to support the modern renter and how do you plan to help supply that need?
- So much of our industry is focused on capturing and retaining residents. There are so many flashy products touting higher traffic rates, better retention, less turnover! But what happens when that valued renter decides to move on with a new chapter of their life? We’ve all seen the metaphorical customer service lightbulb over that resident go dark, telling the onsite team to move on. However, these residents need more support than ever as they navigate through the unknown world of final charges, deposit refunds, and move-out procedures.
The expectation to provide exemplary customer service does not end with the receipt of their notice to vacate. I am currently designing curriculum to specifically spell out important processes to enhance our vacating customer’s experience. We can’t expect our frontline team members to carry out processes without equipping them to do so. They simply “don’t know what they don’t know.” I plan to develop written operational processes that weave state law into company procedures in an easy-to-digest manner and create visual content available through our online learning library to fill the void on “end of tenancy” procedures. A resident's last impression is their most lasting impression of Greystar.