Successful Sales Pitch

Students came asking for help, and John Goff, leader of one of the nation’s largest commercial real estate companies, responded with a generous gift to boost the school’s real estate program.

By Molly Dannenmaier

When Dean Jay Hartzell and five MBA students went to visit John Goff, BBA ’77, in his Fort Worth office two years ago, they had a pitch for him to consider, and they had a good feeling about it. Goff, the founder and chair- man of Crescent Real Estate LLC, one of the largest commercial real estate companies in the nation, is famously warm and welcoming — and he is a huge fan of his alma mater.

Plus, he learned a long time ago that students can have some pretty momentous ideas. After all, when he was a student at UT, his decision to switch from engineering to business ended up catapulting him into a career that he couldn’t have imagined — one in which a big real estate gamble he took in his early 30s ended up propelling him into the industry’s top tier.

His visitors from McCombs had a real estate proposition in mind, too.

“I was really impressed,” says Goff. “This was a very prepared, high-caliber group of students. They sold me.”

The pitch in a nutshell: Help the McCombs real estate program become No. 1 in the country.

Goff loved it. He donated $6 million, which will expand the McCombs student-managed real estate investment fund, pay for a new star faculty chair in real estate, and fund the creation of the John Goff Labs in Rowling Hall, McCombs’ new graduate school building, set to open in early 2018.

Goff Labs will be located prominently on the first-floor showcase section of the building and will include a real estate room to support experiential learning, practicums, and events, as well as “theory-to-practice” rooms to be used by graduate business students, faculty members, and corporate partners.

From the Fall 2017 issue of McCombs, the magazine for alumni and friends of the McCombs School of Business. Full PDF