Featured
Kaitlin McCarthy, a 2009 Northeastern graduate, is the founder of one of the first women-owned real estate development firms in Boston.
Kaitlin McCarthy was drawn to the aesthetics of buildings since childhood. She used to steal her mother’s Good Housekeeping magazines, she says, to see the floor plans in each issue.
McCarthy thought she might become an architect one day, until her high school mathematics teacher nominated her to go to an engineering camp.
“I saw that civil engineering had this mix of architecture, the environment, math — all kind of intertwined,” she says. “I really liked learning about not just buildings, but everything outside [of them] in the built environment as well.”
McCarthy, 37, graduated from Northeastern University with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2009. Now, she is one of the first female owners of a real estate development company in Boston.
“As I grew in leadership roles in this business, it became more and more obvious to me that there were no women in ownership roles,” she says. “It’s definitely gotten better since I’ve been in the industry, but I think it’s hard if you don’t see many role models that look like you to envision yourself in that same scenario.”
McCarthy was recently recognized for taking risks and starting her own firm with a Northeastern Women Who Empower Innovation Award in the experienced alumnae award category.
“I felt it was important for women coming up in the industry to see that there can be a woman in the ownership role, because at the end of the day, that is the decision maker,” she says. “And that’s also how women can build wealth for themselves.”
Prior to starting her own company, McCarthy worked in the real estate development, engineering and construction industries for over 15 years.
“Northeastern was such a big part of my journey,” she says.
Thanks to the university’s signature co-op program, McCarthy tried herself in such fields as transportation engineering, building technology, structural engineering and construction management while still in college.
“These are all companies that I actually still work with today,” she says.
In her first job at Boston’s Turner Construction, she grew from a field engineer (tracking work progress) to the head of the financial reporting department (estimating the financial risk of a project).
After earning an MBA to bolster her business knowledge, McCarthy also worked in management consulting, advising several Fortune 100 companies on business strategy, mergers and acquisitions and other operational challenges. This experience, McCarthy says, gave her an opportunity to see a range of industries and better understand different users of real estate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, McCarthy took a step back to reflect on the impact she wanted to make in the next phase of her career. She decided to start Ionic Development Co. one of the first women-owned real estate development and consulting firms in Boston.
“It felt like the right time in my life, personally, to take a risk and to try to start something myself,” she says.
It was challenging in the beginning, McCarthy says, to navigate the administrative stages of starting a business — such as setting up accounting or getting insurance. The market was also not as favorable as pre-pandemic, she says, and it became a lot more difficult to bring projects to life.
But once she secured her first client — a large life science project of over a half-million square feet — more work started coming in.
In the last two years, McCarthy has grown Ionic to three employees — all women — and has been working on life science, office, retail and affordable housing projects, always with an eye toward improving the communities the projects are in.
According to McCarthy, Ionic sometimes partners with other developers, consults for investors or developers, assembles solid project teams, and manages the entire process.
“Depending on the size of the project, we’re starting to see a lot of partnerships form between larger and smaller companies that allows both to be more nimble and more creative in how they’re approaching the projects,” she says.
One of her favorite Ionic projects to date is the first building in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood with all 200 units qualified as affordable housing.
“It’s a neighborhood that very much needs some affordable housing,” McCarthy says. “It’s wonderful to be able to work on a project that will have such a positive impact.”
McCarthy says she is lucky to have found a career path that she feels so passionate about and that keeps her going on really hard days.
She also tries to make time for students and young professionals seeking guidance, as many in the industry did the same for her when she was starting out.
“I try to make decisions on my partners based on giving potentially new entrepreneurs a chance,” she says.
She is excited to continue connecting with fellow women entrepreneurs through the Women Who Empower community, she says, and to serve it as a mentor or in another capacity.
“I think we have a lot we can learn from each other, even though we’re doing different things,” she says. “A lot of us can run up against some of the same challenges or problems that we need to work through, and I definitely see them being a huge resource for me.”