The Short Version

• Meghann Martindale’s 25-year retail real estate career has spanned brokerage, leasing, development, research and strategy.
• Named Avison Young’s senior director and principal of U.S. retail strategy in May 2026, Martindale’s brokerage background continues to shape how she approaches market intelligence, strategy and what helps move deals forward.
• Martindale says experience is essential to interpreting what data reveals about consumer behavior and retail performance.
• She also discusses career reinvention, AI and the importance of staying curious as the Marketplaces Industry evolves.

A Career Built on Resilience, Reinvention and Insight

At the onset of Meghann Martindale’s career, her mother gifted her a plaque that came to perch on every desk she would occupy in her 25-year retail journey. It quoted an ageless message of resilience: “Never, never, never give up.” The saying, frequently paraphrased from a statement Winston Churchill made during World War II, has served as the compass for Martindale’s career, guiding her from roles in leasing and development to more recent work on retail strategy, data, trends and consumer insights.

“I can’t tell you how many times that quote kept me going,” said Martindale. Her career path has taken her from a small San Francisco retail brokerage to Simon, Related and CBRE — then known as CB Richard Ellis — among others. From 2021 through 2024, she led research at Madison Marquette Retail, and when Avison Young bought that company, she stayed aboard to build Avison Young’s national retail market intelligence platform. 

Two years later, in May of this year, Avison Young named Martindale senior director and principal of U.S. retail strategy. Martindale has become one of the industry’s foremost authorities on research and analytics, and her background includes brokerage. Thus, this expansion of her role reflects a bold strategy on the part of Avison Young to create a retail platform in which market intelligence not only informs strategy but also drives deals. “We are insight led, agile, clever and unlike anything else in the market,” Martindale said, noting the firm’s commitment to do things differently.

Avison Young principal and U.S. president Harry Klaff said: “Meghann’s deep retail expertise and strategic vision make her the right leader to advance this effort and deliver great value to our clients and to our team. By leveraging intelligence to deliver better client outcomes, we are reinforcing Avison Young’s retail platform as a trusted and influential authority grounded in insight, credibility, and long-term relevance.”

Finding a Creative Outlet in Retail Brokerage

Yet data analysis and dealmaking were the farthest things from Martindale’s young mind when she stepped off the graduation stage at Pepperdine University, Bachelor of Arts in humanities in hand with a cum laude distinction. Her plan was to break into the art world upon her return to her native Bay Area amid the dot-com bust.

Limited opportunities in that arena, though, prompted her to pursue a different path, and a family referral helped her land a job at the then-80-year-old Blatteis Realty Co. And as it happens, Martindale’s first deal as a retail associate at the local brokerage did indeed usher an art gallery into San Francisco’s Union Square.

“I took the job out of necessity,” Martindale said. “Growing up, I was determined not to go into real estate because my family was in residential real estate. I didn't even know commercial real estate existed.” One deal led to another, and she was hooked. “I discovered that retail wasn't just about leasing space; it was an art form in the business world. It blends creativity with strategy, consumer psychology, design, finance, development and human behavior in a way that no other asset class does.”

More on Creativity in the Marketplaces Industry

Rethinking Retail Real Estate: The Rising Value of Creative Problem-Solving
Creativity: A Must-Have Skill in Today’s Commercial Real Estate Job Market

Martindale’s leasing and development experience also includes two-and-a-half years as a senior leasing representative at Simon, more than three years as a leasing representative for Related and retail brokerage roles with CBRE and Terranomics.

Though naturally outgoing, Martindale maintained a lower profile early in her career. With each job transition, she felt she needed to prove herself before challenging in-place thinking. Then, a trusted superior encouraged her to stop playing it safe and start sharing her perspective. The advice became a defining moment. It gave her the confidence to question assumptions, challenge the status quo and embrace the role her family long had envisioned for her — that of a natural change agent.

“I've learned that the best leadership outcomes come from a willingness to challenge conventional thinking,” she said. “‘Fortune favors the bold’ is timeless leadership advice, but it’s more relevant today than ever. Technology and the pace of change are transforming every industry. Progress rarely comes from doing things the way they’ve always been done; it comes from having the courage to evolve before you’re forced to.”

Turning Deal Experience Into Market Intelligence

Reinvention has become a hallmark of Martindale’s career. In 2017, after a decade in brokerage and seven years in-house, she recognized the signs of burnout in herself and stepped away. “I knew I needed to recharge and challenge myself in a different way,” she said.

She didn’t leave the industry but rather reinvented her role within it. She began consulting on retail real estate strategy and evolved from a retail guest-lecturer role at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate into an adjunct instructor there. “Teaching at Schack turned out to be the most rewarding experience of my career,” she said. “I walked into the classroom hoping I could teach my students something meaningful. What I never expected was how much they would teach me. Their curiosity, fresh perspectives and willingness to challenge assumptions reignited my passion for the industry. They reminded me that learning never stops and that your career doesn’t have to follow a straight line.”

Thus followed another turn in Martindale’s career. In 2019, she joined CBRE as global head of retail research. Martindale doesn’t miss lease negotiations herself, but she does want to empower other dealmakers. “I’m a recovering dealmaker,” she joked, though there were aspects of it she loved. “There was nothing more rewarding than seeing a tenant finally open its doors. I was always drawn to the bigger picture, the strategy, the vision and creating places where retailers could succeed more than the day-to-day details of negotiating a lease.”

And she credits her brokerage experience as foundational to everything she does today. “Having been on the deal side gives me a different perspective,” she said. “No matter how strategic or data-driven my work becomes, I always look at it through the lens of what helps get a deal done. That experience has been invaluable.”

In her research roles, Martindale has mastered data, which no doubt plays a more prominent role in the industry day after day. But her new post at Avison Young also charges her with attracting and developing new retail real estate talent, as she and Avison Young U.S. retail services platform leader Gavin Farnam are building an intelligence-led brokerage and property management platform that blends market insight with execution.

Martindale now looks back and realizes: “Every role I’ve held in my career taught me a different side of the business and that all those past experiences seem to be converging in this new chapter of my life.”

Helping Reshape the Retail Narrative

For years now, Martindale has earned a reputation for helping reshape the retail narrative, refuting the “retail apocalypse” notion and edifying audiences on numerous other topics. She has made more than 100 media appearances via The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, WWD, GlobeSt, ICSC’s Commerce + Communities Today, ConnectCRE, Chain Store Age, the Los Angeles Times and numerous business journals. In the past few years, she’s spoken on wide-ranging topics like the impact of inflation and immigration policies on retail and on microtrends like the effect of weight-loss drugs on fashion sales. The latter, she told Retail Dive recently, “isn’t a one-time shopping event; it’s a multiphase wardrobe-refresh throughout the [individual consumer’s] transformation.” The Avison Young retail services team, including Martindale, earned an Influencers in Retail Real Estate 2025 award from GlobeSt. And this year, she was a GlobeSt 2026 Women of Influence Winner in the PropTech Executive/Innovator category.

Martindale, who serves as vice chair of ICSC’s North American Research Group, is also a featured speaker at industry events and a regular panelist at ICSC events. And this spring, she received her 25-year-member pin from ICSC. “It occurred to me that I’ve been in this industry and involved with ICSC nearly half my entire life,” she said. “It reminded me that a career is bigger than any one job. ICSC has connected me with mentors, opportunities and lifelong friendships that have made me better at what I do and, more importantly, a better person. My life and career are richer because of the people I’ve met through this organization.”

Where Data Meets Experience

While the industry spent much of the past few decades talking about retail oversupply, Martindale said the center of gravity has shifted. “The conversation today is no longer about too much retail; it’s about the scarcity of high-quality retail assets and precision decisionmaking.” But the industry’s biggest challenge today, she said, is the acceleration of change. “Technology, AI, consumer behavior, geopolitics and the economy are all moving faster than ever.”

Martindale stressed that data can be good and still not present the full picture. For that, companies need someone who knows how to put it to best use, she said. “Data can tell you what’s happening, but it’s experience in this business that really helps you understand something more important: why it’s happening and what might happen next.” Retail trade areas, once defined by a circle on a map, “have evolved into data-driven behavioral zones reflecting customer movement, digital footprints, tourism, real-time foot traffic and other microgeographic factors, aiding decisionmaking, particularly merchandising, at multiple retail levels,” she added. “When I started in the business, real estate was about location, location, location, and now it is behavior, behavior, behavior.”

Martindale entered retail real estate in the era of cookie-cutter shopping centers, before e-commerce transformed the industry. Today, she believes, success depends not just on adapting to change but anticipating it. “In this business, you need enough runway to see what’s coming next,” she said. “The leaders who thrive stay curious, keep learning and remain relevant. Standing still isn’t an option.”

That philosophy shapes her view of artificial intelligence, too. “We’re all figuring AI out together,” she said. “It’s encouraging to see how openly the industry is sharing ideas and experimenting because everyone recognizes the magnitude of this moment. The last technological shift of this scale was the birth of e-commerce, and AI will be equally if not more transformative. I don’t see it replacing human expertise in my generation; I see it amplifying it, helping us work smarter, deliver stronger advice and create better outcomes for our clients.”

Martindale has worked on more deals than she can count and has walked countless properties to see what works and doesn’t. She has developed an instinct for what makes places successful, from merchandising and customer shopping patterns to investment strategy and placemaking. Fueled by her career-long resolve to remain curious and passionate, she has accumulated experiences and insights that allow her to see beyond the numbers to what truly drives a property’s performance. “Data tells you what’s happening, but experience helps you understand why,” she said. “Consumers may say the economy is terrible, yet retail spending continues to grow. Understanding why is where judgment matters.”

Martindale said the future of retail won’t be shaped by data alone. “I’ve learned that the best decisions come from combining data with experience, strategy, dealmaking and a little artistry,” she said. “Retail has always been where science meets human behavior. That’s what makes it endlessly fascinating, and that’s what keeps me excited about what’s next.”