Samantha Rudin Earls and Michael Rudin On the Family Firm at 100

Ohana — as “Lilo & Stitch” reminds us — means family, and when you are the Rudins, family means spending a century helping define the New York City landscape.

Founded in 1925 by Samuel Rudin and his siblings, Rudin Management Company — simply Rudin following a recent rebranding — has gone on to become a mainstay in the New York City commercial real estate business. Now run by third and fourth generations of the family, Rudin is responsible for 31 properties — 17 residential and 14 commercial office buildings — around the city.

After Samuel Rudin, his two sons Jack and Lewis took over. They were succeeded by cousins Eric Rudin and Bill Rudin, the latter of whom has now turned the business over to his children Samantha Rudin Earls and Michael Rudin. However, Bill and Eric are still involved in the business as co-executive chairmen. 

Samantha Rudin Earls and Michael Rudin have been at the helm of the company for just about a year and a half as co-chief executive officers. They sat down with Commercial Observer in mid-May to discuss their experiences leading one of the city’s biggest privately owned real estate firms, the Rudin legacy a century in and their own experiences within the business.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: You both have been co-CEO for a year and a half. How are you navigating that responsibility together?

Samantha Rudin Earls: Well, we started out as co-siblings. We’re 14 months apart and we just have a strong dynamic; we balance each other out and have complementary skills. We were raised by the same parents, and for some siblings that doesn’t always mean that you’re going to have the same values. But in our case it’s created this efficiency, and we’re able to show up and balance our roles and positions here and find that cruising altitude and helpful dynamic that lets us divide our roles effectively and also expands the impact in our reach.

We’re a year in, and time keeps going and we just keep moving and supporting each other. It makes it so that when there are challenges or different storms to navigate, knowing that I have someone who has my back — especially as a woman in the industry, and having a really strong male that supports and values that — helps reinforce what I’m doing, and I think sends a really strong message within our company.

Michael Rudin: We grew up very close. We’ve shared a lot of friends over the years, and when you are that close being raised together, it’s almost like twins. But then we started to pursue different paths. Sammy was in theater and wanted to pursue a career in acting, and from an early age I wanted to be in the family business. So, for a period of our lives, we were on very different trajectories, but, ultimately, we both found our way here.

With the paths that we each followed to get here, it’s worked out nice where Sammy does more of the residential side and I do more of the office side. But it’s a family business, and we’re both very much aware of, and involved in, everything that’s going on.

At the end of the day, if there are major decisions to make, we’re sitting down together with our father, cousin and the other executives and leaders in the company, and talking about whatever it is that’s the topic du jour or decision that needs to be made. It’s very rare that I’m making this decision by myself. This position can be a very daunting place, so when you have that partner and support, it makes it a lot less scary.

Samantha, you are the first female CEO in the company’s 100-year history. Do you think that is something your “great-greats” would have envisioned for the future of Rudin?

Earls: I’m named after our great-grandfather Samuel. He was always ahead of his time and he was a visionary. So I believe that he would have deeply — in his vision for Rudin — understood the importance and value of having a diverse workforce, and he certainly would have embraced the people who are showing up and doing the work.  

​​All throughout our family, from our great-grandmother May Rudin to our aunt Beth to our cousin Madeleine to our mother Ophelia, we have had strong examples of female leadership to call upon and help shape us.

I am also lucky to be mentored by industry icons Mary Ann Tighe and Amy Rose.

This year marks Rudin’s centennial. What is it like to have your family business hit that milestone?

Earls: It’s a huge honor and it’s very exciting that we’ve made it 100 years. Michael and I represent the fourth generation of our family to lead our business. We’re here to celebrate and enjoy this moment because of the really hard work of multiple generations.

We both have this unique position of having grown up in the business, having watched our father, our cousin Eric, our grandfather and our great-uncle. We have been witness and privy to watching their leadership, and we’ve been learning basically our whole lives. So, we understand the value and importance of honoring and respecting the past, and we’re in this pivotal moment to look to the future. It’s really important to keep our values in place, but we don’t want to rest on our laurels. We know we have to constantly be looking toward the future and evaluating the path forward.

Rudin: It’s not lost on either one of us, both the legacy of our family and the history of what our family has been involved with in New York City — but also the statistics around family members in leadership positions in a fourth generation and how rare that is. We both take that responsibility very seriously and passionately.

What lessons from your predecessors are you taking with you as you navigate the path forward?

Rudin: Still, to this day, we watch and learn from our father and our cousin Eric. They are great mentors, and again we’re incredibly lucky to have more than just an “I remember when” because it is happening now. They are still here. They’re both very active, and we know we can call them, text them, email them, or walk into their office at any time and ask for guidance, advice or feedback.

We also overlapped with our Great Uncle Jack for a few years each. Sadly, we never got to work with our grandfather Lew — we were 16 and 17 years old, respectively, when he passed away. We didn’t have the on-the-job experience with him, but we got many years of absorbing his way of living, and doing, and leading.

This business has been passed down from second generation to third generation and now to us. It’s a legacy of integrity, honesty, hard work and a kind of diligence around doing the right thing. A core statement of our business is that our handshake is our bond.

Earls: Another lesson we’ve learned is resiliency. Our grandfather passed away in 2001, right after 9/11, and we watched the city go through the trauma of 9/11 and the recovery. We weren’t here in the 1970s during the fiscal crisis, but we heard all the stories and we understand.

There is an expression that goes, “Don’t just be a bystander, be an upstander,” and our family has worked diligently and been dedicated and devoted through each generation to being on the front lines to lift up the city every time it struggles. That is just embedded in the DNA of our family and our business.

How has Rudin advocated for the betterment of New York City in the past, and how does the company pursue that goal today?

Earls: The nature of our business is that it is built into the bedrock of New York City. To make sure that our streets are kept clean and ensure the safety and well-being of our city and New Yorkers, that’s just gone hand in hand with our business. If people don’t feel safe and secure living in the city, if the conditions aren’t right, that’s going to have an impact on our business.

So, we’ve just continuously understood the importance of investing in the infrastructure — in schools, in hospitals, in neighborhoods —  and that notion of giving back helps everyone. It helps the business be strong; it helps the city and its people.

Rudin: As far as some specifics, New York University has been an institution on the educational side that we’ve supported across various initiatives. Most of the major hospitals in the city have received support for a very long period of time. We’ve supported the Police Foundation and the Fire Foundation for years. 

In late April, I was up at Columbia University with our cousin Eric. It was the 50th anniversary of a scholarship program in the nursing school that our family established in the mid-1970s. About 750 nurses have received the scholarship over the last 50 years across different areas of care. To see the impact is crazy.

It’s actually quite astounding the number of times a nurse will see our last name and say, “I was the recipient of one of the Rudin scholarships when I was a nursing student.” It’s this totally random occurrence. This is a major city, and many of the graduates go on to other cities. But, to be able to know that you helped somebody achieve their goal or their dream, who’s then making an impact of their own and helping someone else, is a really special and amazing thing to be a part of.

How has Rudin been developing its residential and office assets to draw in tenants?

Earls: On our residential side, we’ve just taken the last five or six years to really reinvest in our portfolio, amenitize it, and understand where we’re taking buildings that are well located with great bones and large floor plates — the latter of which has been really appealing post-COVID. We’ve been infusing them with fitness centers, outdoor lounges and game rooms, boosting them with these modern amenities that are very compelling.

We’re very customer and service focused. We’ve just continued to see a really strong showing in our residential portfolio, and we continue to focus on that on the office side. We’re seeing that things continue to come back to a place of understanding the importance of being in the office. Our offices are so strong and well located, and the modern worker wants to come into the office. Bringing that hospitality through because we’ve already been working so strongly on the residential side is this natural progression.

Rudin: And to Sammy’s point on the commercial side, our tenant experience platform, which is called the Rudin Experience, is bringing that hospitality touch and feel to the office portfolio. Last year across our office portfolio we had 84 events in our lobbies with about 14,000 of our tenants’ employees engaged in those programs. And that’s everything from food and beverage offerings, to fitness and wellness classes, to adopt-a-puppy events. In one building, we had a pretzel day and people were going out of their minds for pretzels.

Our business for so long was about connecting at the company level. We’d get a company to come to our building and then, from that point on, it was on them to figure out how to engage with their employees. That has shifted over the last five or 10 years in our business. We, as the building owner and landlord, have to put ourselves in the shoes of the individual people and employees, regardless of whether they work for us or for our tenants. That mindset shift and mentality change has been incredibly important in terms of re-establishing ourselves and our brand.

We also had a pretty strong leasing year that was anchored by our renewal and expansion with Blackstone at 345 Park Avenue. Blackstone has been a tenant of ours since the late `80s, and we consider our tenants to be partners in this journey and process; their success is our success, and vice versa. Blackstone is one of the most prominent companies in the world, and one we’re proud to say has their headquarters here in our portfolio.

Tell us what’s going on at 350 Park and how the relationship with Citadel and Vornado came together?

Rudin: We are working closely with Vornado and Citadel to advance plans for a state-of-the-art, 1.8 million-square-foot office tower at 350 Park Avenue. We recently kicked off the land use review process for the tower, which will serve as Citadel’s future New York City headquarters and house more than 6,000 jobs. This massive undertaking further affirms New York City’s enduring allure to the world’s leading finance and investment firms.

What are some of the headwinds the business is facing or has faced?

Rudin: Our headwinds are the general market dynamics that the industry and the city are facing right now. There are quality-of-life issues at the city level that impact our business. And, on the civic and philanthropic side, there are things that we stay in touch with and want to make sure are getting resolved or worked on in a timely and orderly fashion. There’s the macro capital markets environment and climate right now, again, coming out of COVID. There’s the depression of values, the interest rate environment and the uncertainty in terms of international trade, and then how those dynamics will impact our business.

There are a lot of challenges, but we like to think of them as leading to opportunities. Are there new things to buy? Are there development opportunities or conversion opportunities? We look at it through the lens of: Is it challenging? Yes. But does it also afford an opportunity? Yes.

Is there anything in the office portfolio that you are struggling to lease?

Rudin: That was the genesis of things like the conversions of 355 Lexington Avenue and 845 Third Avenue. Over the last year and a half or so, we undertook a highest and best use analysis of every one of our office buildings. We’ve always had this motto of “don’t sell,” and that worked great for a period of time — the overwhelming majority of the last 100 years. But, just because things were done a certain way for a long period of time, doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do them moving forward. And so we took a look in the mirror and said, “What do we want the future of the company to be?”

We assessed every single asset to make sure that we’re thinking about them in the best way possible, again, from an operational perspective, but also from a shareholder and a family perspective.

What should we expect from Rudin over the next 100 years?

Earls: We have always taken a long-term perspective. Our great-grandfather was a long-distance runner, which is why his two sons chose to sponsor the marathon in his honor. Similarly, we are here for the long run. Michael and I see our role as helping to pass the torch to the next generation, just as it was passed to us.

To achieve this, we must continue to modernize and adapt. We have also built a strong leadership team that is guiding us forward and adding tremendous value. At the core of Rudin are the people. We care about how they want to live, work, and exist within the community. If we can continue to deliver on those values, then the Rudin way — our legacy — will continue on.

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.

UPDATE: This article has been corrected to reflect the succession of the Rudin firm’s leadership from the second to the third generations.