Burns School standout finds purpose and confidence at DU
For Taylor Iascone (MS 2017), it all started with an epiphany: “One day I looked out of my office window and thought, there is a whole built environment out there. Yet here I am, in one city (Boston), spending my career on just 43 of those buildings. I reimagined myself as a global thinker, an influencer.”
By most measures, Iascone was already a success. Her title was associate director of facilities for the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She managed a crew of 60 custodians, monitors for 43 buildings, the ground-up construction of a 175,000 square foot multi-use LEED Gold building, as well as programs for work orders, preventative and deferred maintenance, a furniture inventory surplus database and capital forecasting.
“My direct report was the subsequent decision-maker, ” Iascone said. “The real work fell on me. As time passed and business changed, I noticed a shift. But I would still walk into his office and make recommendations based on reality and new possibilities but would always seem to get a ‘no’ or some sort of excuse. I didn’t like ‘no.’ I didn’t believe in ‘no.’ Actually, after a while ‘no’ didn’t really exist for me.”
Disappointed that her innovative ideas were continuously ignored, Iascone sought other possibilities, turning her frustration into motivation.
“Three years before I turned in my resignation, I started a plan,” Iascone said. “I started to realize that academia was the only path. I had an undergraduate degree. I knew the power universities had to connect like-minded individuals. Universities are information hubs and have a world of connections. I trusted that an advanced degree would move my career in the direction I needed it to go—and that is exactly what happened.”
Iascone began making phone calls to real estate and construction management schools all over the U.S. One day, she called the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver. The person who answered said someone named Barb would call her back.
Iascone with Assistant Professor Eric Holt
“Somehow, someway, by a stroke of luck, Barb Jackson, the director of the Burns School called me,” Iascone said. “Two and a half years ago she called, and I still remember it. We had an amazing 25 minutes together. Everything I was wishing for she was talking about in the first five minutes. I thought this woman was either telepathic or we just think alike, which was surprising coming from a mind that always felt like she didn’t truly fit in or was understood. But Barb was an amazing listener. I did most of the talking and she just understood me. That’s what I was looking for, an understanding. She didn’t try to sell me on the School. Instead, she listened for what would best serve me and my goals. I understood the curriculum was tailored to the student and I did my due diligence. Barb recognized the challenge and the strain in my voice. She understood the limitations at my job and the dire need for a new opportunity to support and broaden my thirst to impact the industry. She explained how the program allows students to change their own lives while positively impacting the lives of others too. Everything made complete sense. It was then I knew my life was about to change.”
Iascone continued to call other programs but her experience with those schools was markedly different.
“One school turned me down for being 25 points under their GMAT test score requirement,” she said. “Another directed me to their real estate certificate program—’build your network that way.’ They all knew I was clearly out to maximize myself and my opportunities but could not break the institutional mold. In just 25 minutes, I had developed a great respect for Barb and her work, which continues to this day. I chose Burns.”
So Iascone, who had always envisioned herself living out west, packed up and moved out to Denver to pursue a Master’s of Real Estate and the Built Environment from the Burns School.
“I knew it was time,” she said. “I gave up my six-figure job of 10 years. My boyfriend and I broke up. I was stressed out. I felt physically sick from years of commuting 120 miles every day to a place that diminished my happiness. So, I mustered up the strength the day after my best friend’s wedding on Sept. 18, 2016, and off I went.”
Iascone with her classmates
At the Burns School, faculty members referred to Iascone as a superstar student. She was involved, hardworking and conscientious. She enrolled in a wealth of classes but one stood out in particular—CityCraft, a Burns course taught by John Knott, who insists he is neither a professor nor a teacher.
“He, like Barb, is a listener, a great listener,” Iascone said. “I found that Barb’s open-mindedness and innovative approach—her emotional intelligence—permeates through all of Burns’ faculty and coursework. CityCraft goes a little further. John did not tell us what to do. We did it. We did it through his conversations with us. Very philosophical, based on principles. CityCraft creates thinking. In the beginning, we thought—what is going on here? We all had so many questions. By day one we had to have read two books: ‘Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture’ by Ross King and ‘Cathedral: The Story of its Construction’ by David Macaulay, which was sort of a children’s book.”
The class proved to be a challenge but that was exactly what Iascone wanted.
“Essentially, I just waited five years to be in that class,” Iascone said. “CityCraft is why I have more confidence in my thinking, a better understanding of myself. I am clearer. I am mentally stimulated on the subject. So many great things came out of that three-month course. I kept telling Barb, I wish I had taken it first.”
Iascone at her graduation ceremony
The CityCraft course forced Iascone to dig deep and use that same drive and determination that pushed her to the Burns School in the first place.
“The classroom was strategically chosen and set up in a U-shape where we all faced each other,” Iascone said. “Were students handpicked? I don’t know. But we all seemed to have the same core—adversity and drive—that made us all relatable. We studied a finished project— Noisette in South Carolina—and one project in process: West Denver. CityCraft is much more than city planning. It is a collaborative, integrative, systematic approach to the global impacts of real estate. It incorporates a framework encapsulating the social, environmental and financial constraints on the built environment. This class enabled us to develop platforms that transformed bio regions. The integration and interplay of so many layers required an enormous amount of thinking and rethinking. For the three teams in the class, it wasn’t work, it was pure fun and drew more out of us than we thought we had.”
Now, as a graduate of the program, Iascone explained that the diploma was just a small part of what the Burns School experience meant to her.
“In considering what I got out of my experience with Burns,” Iascone said, “the diploma was very important, yes, but less than a third for me. More important were the many connections that grew into significant relationships, my newfound mental clarity through CityCraft and the knowledge to understand the next steps in my purpose. I spent months job searching and finally felt I could relate to a company that was actively addressing my newfound beliefs in real estate. I accepted my position at a national firm, Swinerton Builders, where I am now working as a project engineer on the Google project in Boulder, Colorado, via a connection made through Burns. And most importantly, was my personal growth into that confident thinker, that influencer that I first envisioned for myself. My Burns education was now a huge part of my life’s purpose and continuously brings innovation my way.”
