It is hard to believe that Katie Kopec is celebrating her 35th year at JLL. Especially when you hear her talk about her job. She is like a kid in a playground. As excited and enthusiastic about the role she gets to play in the built environment as you would expect an overly keen graduate to be on their first day in their dream job. It is infectious. And rather wonderful.
Kopec was not born into real estate. Going to a convent school, surveying was not high on the list of “proper” jobs to aspire to get. A nurse, a teacher. They were proper jobs. With a doctor father, Kopec thought she’d try her hand at dentistry but, in a welcome twist of fate, didn’t get the grades needed so ended up becoming an office junior in Reading-based commercial surveyor Gibson Eley.
At Gibson Eley, Kopec got to try her hand at everything – even chauffeuring when her boss lost his driving licence – and got the bug for real estate.
Now she can’t believe she even contemplated dentistry. Real estate was where she wanted to be.
After completing a degree at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster), Kopec was offered a job on the spot by JLL (or Jones Lang Wooten as it was in those days). She was meant to go back to Reading to Gibson Eley, but London and the opportunity it presented was too tempting. She has been there ever since.
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Docklands calls
After a stint in management, a stint that Kopec says gave her the foundation on which she has built a stellar career – and some of London’s greatest developments, Kopec moved into office agency and then was tasked with setting up an office in the Docklands at the time when Canary Wharf was just starting to come out of the ground. It was here that Kopec found her calling.
“I literally felt, pile-by-pile, all-day, every day the piles of Canary and that was just fantastic if you were into development. It was just brilliant. I was like a kid in a candy shop,” says Kopec. “I look back at Canary now and I think ‘Wow, I remember when there was just Limehouse Studios on there, which was a black box. There was nothing else. And to be honest, I feel slightly proud because I was part of that.”
Canary Wharf was just the first bit of “new London” that Kopec has been part of, however. Running through some of London’s greatest regeneration projects with her, Kopec excitedly but without a hint of arrogance says: “Yeah, there’s a bit of me in that.”
During her career, Kopec has played important roles in the development of King’s Cross Central, where she acted for London Continental Railways in its appointment of Argent to develop the 56-acre site; she has worked with the Olympic Delivery Authority and the Olympic Park Legacy Corporation on the press and media centre and Olympic stadium, selected Lendlease to deliver the Athlete’s Village; and advised the government on Greenwich Peninsula, arguing the benefits of taking the Jubilee Line to the area and selling the white elephant that was the Millennium Dome. She is now working with British Land on its regeneration of 46 acres around Canada Water, E14.
There is barely a part of London that doesn’t have a little Kopec in it.
“I’m extremely enthusiastic and once I’ve really committed to something I really do commit and get on with it,” says Kopec. “I think that’s probably one of the reasons I’ve been around in this business for 35 years and doing the development side of business, where things take a long time. You have to be pretty passionate to be able to see those things through.”
“What I really enjoyed about King’s Cross was the mix of uses,” she adds. “I think that’s where things have really changed. Before you used to have very single-use type of developments. You had a residential development, you had an office development and you had a retail development, but very rarely were they combined as a normal city would combine them, and that was the beauty with King’s Cross.”
With more than three decades in the business, Kopec has seen the industry evolve. Not just from the way that we develop our environments, but in the environment of work too.
Pioneering partner
She was the first female partner at JLL and had her children at a time when there was no maternity policy. Until her, of course. The firm had to write a policy specifically for Kopec.
“Things have changed quite a lot,” says Kopec with a smile. “There has been a lot of change and it is a lot higher on people’s agenda, which is really good. I think we still need to do more, but there are lots of opportunities to do that.”
She adds: “I’m passionate about making sure that the bright young things rise up the business and are suitably promoted fast enough. As women, I think we don’t push ourselves perhaps has much as we should. We think that we need to be 100% ready before we do the next thing when actually we are ready at 60%. More and more the talent you see – both male and female – needs to be pushed. And they want to be pushed, so the more we can pull them up and give them challenging things to do, the better we will make our industry and our business.”
Kopec’s passion for work, life and creating amazing spaces is as undeniable as it is infectious. After 35 years in an industry that is not without its challenges, she remains convinced she made the right decision. Development, not dentistry.
Katie Kopec on…
Progression
“You simply cannot look at what you did yesterday and think ‘I can do that tomorrow’. It is just not on. Doing some proper insightful work as to what those changes are that you need to respond to is really, really important.”
Career success
“Keep doing excellent stuff and you’ll be recognised for it. Try to make a difference and not conform. Be a bit bold and think a little differently.”
Creating great places
“It’s about understanding the relationship between the uses and the places that you make, and what makes a great place and why people what to go there. That is what success is about. If you get those bits right, the value follows.”
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