How Karen Scott ended up in construction still makes her scratch her head. Armed with a communications degree from the University of West Florida, Scott initially wanted to go into advertising. Thus in the late 1970s, she was working as an advertising manager at the Lane Bryant regional office in Miami.

Scott moved on to advertising sales at the Miami Herald, but what she really wanted was a career in public relations, so she answered a blind ad for a marketing director at Westland Mall, in Hialeah, Fla. She started that job in 1982, and that is where her relationship with retail took the next step. “Within about two weeks, I absolutely fell in love with the business,” she said. And that also began her story with ICSC.

Her predecessor at Westland Mall, Phyllis Weber, introduced her to the Florida Council of Shopping Centers, which became part of ICSC four years later, in 1986. The association meetings “were great learning opportunities to hear from other people in the industry about what was working and what wasn’t,” Scott said.

Her career eventually brought her into construction, project management and tenant coordination in the U.S. and the Middle East. Her resume is extensive: She has worked for Core Communities, Edward J. DeBartolo Co., The Greeby Cos., Michael Swerdlow Co., Related Urban Management, Tavistock Development Co., Trammell Crow Co., and TDIC Food & Beverage in Abu Dhabi. Scott has been involved with some 20 million square feet of retail and mixed-use projects across the U.S., including membership on the grand-opening team for New York City’s Shops at Columbus Circle and more recently on the grand-opening team for The Shops at Clearfork, in Fort Worth, Texas.

At ICSC CenterBuild conferences, Scott met Bradley Sanders, president of retail project management firm Skye Group, which CBRE acquired in 2016. Sanders offered Scott a job as a senior project manager in 2015, based in Orlando. Since then, she has worked on a major shopping center expansion, three new centers, the ongoing refurbishment of an existing center and the office components of a mixed-use transportation hub.

Scott is involved mostly with new mixed-use projects. “I work with owners and developers to help them get their tenants open for business,” she said. “I am a very project-driven person: I like getting projects open, done, complete and handed off, and then move on to something else.”

Scott wrote Shopping Center Tenant Coordination, a book published by ICSC in 1996, and feels she has another book in her. In 2016, she completed a master’s degree in international construction management at the University of Florida.

Scott also became an ICSC Certified Retail Real Estate Professional in 2018. “If you are going to take the time and invest in professional growth, then if there is an opportunity to … get certified, you should do it,” she said. That’s why she participated when ICSC asked volunteers to update its education and certification for a new age of business and a new generation of professionals that values collaboration. The result was the CRRP designation.

Her interest in certification, as well as mentorship, is meant to pay back those who assisted her when she entered the industry. “One of the things that has been so valuable to me is the mentors that I was able to find through the ICSC,” she said. “And I hope [that] in return, I have been able to provide that type of mentorship to others.”