Building Places Podcast: Tulane perspectives on Real Estate
August 19, 2026
by rawad nahhas
Building Places is a podcast exploring the people, projects, and ideas shaping the real estate industry, brought to you from Tulane University's real estate program. But framed more precisely, it's a conversation network masquerading as audio: John Renne, director of Tulane's Real Estate Development program, has created a platform to connect the people actively building cities.
In his opening episode, Renne introduces the podcast's purpose:
"This podcast is about the people shaping the future of cities across the United States. It is rooted in the Tulane real estate community."
The emphasis is deliberate. Twice monthly, the podcast draws from an ecosystem of alumni, faculty, students, and advisory board members, not as case studies or retrospectives, but as practitioners in the field, actively leading real estate development across the country.
The inaugural season has brought voices like Angela O'Byrne, President and CEO of Perez, APC and longtime chair of the school's advisory council, and Ben Lavery, Director of Real Estate Development for MIT Investment Management Company.
The podcast also serves another strategic purpose: amplifying Tulane's newly launched Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development program, an executive-style online degree for working professionals nationwide. The program's reach extends beyond the classroom, Renne and faculty member John Huppi are leading MSRED students on an immersive field experience to Paris and London to study pioneering projects in sustainable real estate development.
Real estate development, for Tulane, is a discipline rooted in the belief that the built environment and the networks that shape it matter. Building Places puts that network on record.
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