Kristin Mueller landed in Orlando on Sunday, March 1, 2020, to join 1,500 of her JLL property management colleagues at the firm’s annual meeting, slated to start the next day. Or so she thought. Turns out there would be an abrupt change of plans.

Reports of a mysterious and rapidly spreading virus were making it increasingly clear to the global commercial real estate services giant that its workers should not be gathered in a dense face-to-face assembly, and so, JLL canceled the meeting first thing Monday. Everyone returned home, except Mueller and a handful of others. The then-25-year JLL veteran remained to start building a monumental strategy to operate the company’s more than 750 million square feet of managed properties in the U.S. during what was fast shaping up to be a worldwide crisis. The big-picture-minded Mueller, then COO of the JLL property management platform, had volunteered to head what would come to be called the JLL Property Management COVID Task Force.

Her team went to work with war-room efficiency, challenged with the delicate balance between keeping JLL properties connected and safeguarding the health of employees. Clearly, she realized, property management workers at the company’s retail centers and other properties “were to be the first responders on the front lines of the pandemic response.”

That same sense of immediacy since has elevated Mueller to one of the firm’s most pivotal posts, JLL president of retail property management, which she assumed on New Year’s Day. She takes over for fellow company stalwart Greg Maloney, who retired from JLL at the end of 2022 after 45 years in the business, more than half of that time with JLL. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to lead 600 folks around the country serving 200 clients,” said Mueller, who will continue to be based in Atlanta.

Mueller faces tall tasks in her new post. She’ll oversee all aspects of JLL’s U.S. retail property management business, implementing its retail strategies nationwide. These include guiding retail leasing, specialty leasing, marketing, construction management, accounting and strategic consulting services for JLL’s national, local and global retail owners. The firm has a managed portfolio of more than 500 retail properties — including malls, lifestyle centers and open-air centers — some 80 million square feet in total. Mueller is more than up for the challenge, it would seem. “I am more than excited about this opportunity,” she said. “There is a multifaceted and fantastically interesting set of things we get to do for clients.”

How Retail Found Her

Retail found Mueller as she pondered career options during her senior year of college. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in finance with a concentration in international business from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but months before her final exams, Chicago-based JMB Properties, later to become Urban Retail Properties, took a keen interest in her. After a series of exhaustive interviews and commutes to the city, the company offered Mueller a post in its retail division. The offer from JMB — which also operated office, industrial and multifamily properties — came before Mueller could voice her own property path. “I guess they had me pegged for retail all along,” she said.

It was a career she may never have seen if not for being raised in an education-minded family with an entrenched belief in equal opportunity for its female members, something relatively uncommon at the time. Her mother had earned a Ph.D. and her grandmother an undergrad degree, rarities for women of their generations. “We were raised in complete equality,” she recalled. “My father, my mother and my grandparents never expected less from my sister and me. They set the tone.”

Mueller has served as general manager of shopping centers in Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, California and Washington, D.C., and she has property management experience in every region of the U.S., including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. With JLL, she’s held roles as regional manager, head of business development and, from 1994 to early 2018, COO of JLL Retail. She then took over the broader post of COO for all of JLL property management until her latest assignment.

Mueller will mark 29 years with the company this year, more than 23 of those in retail property management. What’s connected her to JLL so long? “Retail real estate is so interesting and consumer driven,” she said. “The industry has always been very good at anticipating people’s needs and wants or spotting changes and quickly adapting; it is dynamic. And I credit the company with providing an inviting environment for people to grow and develop and continue to evolve to take on new challenges. It has kept me challenged, as well.” The top U.S. retail property management post is another extension of a career spent building the bottom line. “Retail property management at JLL drives revenue,” she said. “It is so integral to the offering; you adapt and adapt and find innovative ways to create value.”

What the Head Property Manager Job Entails These Days

Mueller will work closely with another prominent JLL veteran, Retail Advisory Services president Naveen Jaggi. They will collaborate on national leasing in the U.S. and initiatives like new business growth and client satisfaction and engagement. Mueller also will continue to work with global colleagues on growth strategies and operating practices, particularly Canadian co-workers, who share many clients and business interests with their U.S. counterparts.

Mueller and JLL teams will strive to advance the growing industry focus on transforming spaces into community havens and assets, she said. The “people places” trend, in general, “is driving the future of commercial real estate.” Though retail, hotel and multifamily properties have, by necessity, always had a consumer focus, “it’s only been in the last several years that our industry has really come to recognize that these same consumers are also using our office buildings and industrial facilities.” Indeed, commercial developments and redevelopments in general increasingly focus on mixed uses, placing such properties directly in JLL’s operational wheelhouse. “We have lots of experience with transforming those spaces into places where people want to be,” she said.

Mueller has been a vigorous volunteer over the years with industry organizations, including six years on the ICSC Foundation board of directors and chairing several ICSC conferences. Through ICSC, she’s earned Certified Retail Property Executive and Certified Shopping Center Manager designations. She chairs the Urban Land Institute Commercial and Retail Development Council (Silver Flight) and co-chairs BOMA’s National Advisory Council. “Engaging with industry organizations and supporting their objectives continues to be some of the most rewarding work I have had the opportunity to do,” she said. “There’s so much to learn and so many people to meet.”

The biggest property management challenges facing the industry at present are both old and new, she said. The first is a long-standing one: Provide a safe environment. “That has meant different things at different times, but today, it means being prepared for, or stopping, natural disasters, health risks and crime,” she said. Another is delivering value for the consumer, particularly in the present high-inflation environment. “It’s our job to help everyone’s dollar go further, including managing the costs for our retailers and clients.” Third, she said, is the challenge of refining the huge universe of available data to help clients make decisions. “The more information we have, the better we can guide our clients and merchants.”

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Perhaps her most daunting career challenge was guiding the COVID response team that assembled in place of JLL’s canceled Orlando confab. That group, she recalled, resolved to meet daily by video conference as long as necessary. Because each JLL property type requires a tailored approach, the team built hundreds of customized employee-training tool kits. The task force also scrambled to use all forms of communication to reach out to JLL workers as the pandemic unfolded. It wasn’t until August, five months later, that the team finally decided to reduce their daily meetups to six days a week.

Crisis management was not foreign to Mueller, who was general manager at the Valencia Town Center when the 1994 Northridge earthquake, magnitude 6.7, struck the Los Angeles area. The property took more than a year to repair fully, but it avoided the worst, unlike nearby Northridge Fashion Center, where several tenant and parking structures collapsed. “We were incredibly lucky for several reasons,” she said. “Most of our management team lived within walking distance of the mall and gathered at the mall to begin recovery before the sun came up that morning.” And because Valencia Town Center had opened a mere 16 months earlier, the team was able to reach the center’s original contractors immediately to begin timely repairs, she recalled.

Now, as retail stabilizes post-COVID, owners and retailers alike again are pursuing sustainability agendas more aggressively, though that varies by property, Mueller noted. JLL’s role, she stated, is to support sustainability commitments across the board for retailers, owners, customers, suppliers, vendors and communities. “We help retailers, in particular, as they design and build their stores, and we help properties’ common areas, too,” she said.

The multitasking Mueller savors her well-earned leisure hours by traveling, reading, playing cards, cooking, entertaining and spending time with family. “My mother and sister moved down from Milwaukee to join me in Atlanta six years ago, so now the house has activity at all times,” she said. Mueller’s ultimate getaway place? “The beach. Almost any beach. Sun, sun and more sun. The sound of waves. Glorious.”

As for retail’s future, the widespread disruption that has beset the industry in the recent past “is here to stay,” Mueller opined. “And generally, it makes us all better at how we make decisions, how we do our work and how the built environment impacts our world.”