Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/519582
t m c ยป p u l s e | j u n e 2 0 1 5 26 Q | What was it like growing up in California? A | I was born in Carmel but we moved to Southern California soon after that. I spent a lot of time in Monterey and Pacific Grove visiting my grandparents, but lived in Southern California through grade school there. My parents moved to Lake Tahoe when I was in the seventh grade and then to Oregon when I was in high school. I stayed in Lake Tahoe to finish high school, then moved to Oregon for college. Q | So what led you to Oregon State University? A | I hadn't thought about college much. I didn't have really good grades in high school, but I heard that OSU would let you in if you wanted to be a science major. I started with a double major in chemistry and business, and it taught me how to study and be analyt- ical. After a while, I started getting involved in student government, and I also realized that business was much easier than chemistry. By the time I was a junior, I decided to drop chemistry and got an accounting degree instead. Q | And after that you came to Houston? A | Right. My father was a serial entrepreneur. He had a theater in Oregon first, and then he moved to Houston and opened a restaurant in 1976. I didn't have a job right out of school so I worked with him for a month or two, and then took a job with Century Development Corporation. I worked there for about 10 years, then did a leveraged buyout of my division, and that division became Camden. So really, that one job mutated into this one and I've had no other job. Q | I've heard about the amount of time you spend on the aspect of people. Do you find that to be unique in the industry? A | I think it's pretty unique to Camden. We have a wonderful culture. It's a work in progress, but we focus RICHARD CAMPO,CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF CAMDEN PROPERTY TRUST, SAT DOWN WITH TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF STRATEGY AND OPERATING OFFICER WILLIAM F. McKEON TO DISCUSS HOW HIS COMPANY STRIVES TO PUT PEOPLE FIRST, AND THE SMALL GESTURES THAT HAVE CONSISTENTLY MADE CAMDEN ONE OF FORTUNE'S TOP COMPANIES TO WORK FOR. on it every day. We think about it in the context of our employees and how they feel about where they work. Keith Oden (president of Camden) is my co-founder and business partner. We set out to build a great work- place and wanted to make sure we weren't just focused on or rewarding one particular department rather than our whole team. Real estate companies tend to be deal-oriented and focus on buying a piece of property, improving it, then selling it. The great thing about a public real estate company is that you don't have to sell your properties to make money. You can build long-term portfolios and create value through oper- ating that real estate over a long period of time. You still have to be deal-oriented to a certain extent, but what you really have to do is outperform the market, regardless of market conditions. You do that by buying the right real estate, but you have to manage it with the right people. We look at our real estate as the equipment, and SPOTLIGHT